God Is A Bullet | Review
Jamie Foxx in God Is A Bullet
The Violent Bear It Away: Cassavetes Returns with Hyper Violent Grindhouse Saga
By Nicholas Bell | Published on June 25, 2023
“Say Your Prayers,” demands the tagline for God Is a Bullet, the first directorial effort from Nick Cassavetes in nearly a decade, based on the 1999 novel by Boston Teran. In its two-and-a-half hour running time, it unleashes enough gratuitous violence to suggest the ultimate aim might be to actualize a semblance of PTSD for its audience—at least for those not lulled into a logical interlude of desensitization. Recalling a slew of hyper violent genre spectacles from the New American Cinema movement of the 1970s, of which his father John Cassavetes generated his own iconic legacy, there’s not really a sense of justification for the extreme and eventually ludicrous brutality one is forced to bear witness to, dipping more into exploitation territory than anything resembling catharsis or meaning. And while this revenge drama regarding a bestial Satanic cult does have a handful of moments, which manage to shock and awe, it’s neither savvy enough nor provocative enough to remain gratifying. We’re a long way from the genre hopping Cassavetes’ most celebrated film, 2004’s The Notebook, instead returning to similar energies as his 2006 film Alpha Dog, though trying so hard to infuriate tends to have the opposite effect in this film overburdened by extravagant miseries.
A notorious Satanic cult nabs a young girl holding a pink balloon outside of a grocery store, rearing her as a protege for Cyrus (Karl Glusman), self appointed leader of the Followers of the Left Handed Path. The young girl grows into Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), nicknamed Head Case, who eventually pays a high price for leaving the cult as an adult. Her path crosses with vice Detective Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) when his ex-wife and her new husband are murdered by Cryus, his teen daughter Gabi (Chloe Guy) abducted by them as a new recruit. Bob’s teaming with Case to find his child threatens to expose a sinister collusion, which hits closer to home than he knows
Clearly evoking the shock value inherent to the likes of Sam Peckinpah, or maybe Paul Schrader’s Hardcore (1979), in examining a labyrinthine, nihilistic underbelly of a world long gone sour, Cassavetes’ pacing isn’t slick enough to keep its audience mired in this agony for such an extended amount of time. The film’s viciousness would have remained palpable had God Is a Bullet been pruned of its less arresting elements, those forcing us to examine the developing camaraderie between the irreparably damaged Case and the newly broken Bob. Part of this problem lies in the film’s casting. As likable as Nikolaj Coster-Waldau is, there’s an inert quality regarding his character development, defined by his colleague as a ‘seat warmer’ who isn’t quite skilled enough to embark on such a deleterious journey. We’re never led to believe in Bob’s descent into the underbelly of vigilantism, despite the film’s opening, as grueling as the rape scene of Hope Lange in Death Wish (1974), which sailed Charles Bronson into an exceedingly hoary franchise with strikingliny diminishing returns by the time the fifth installment was released in 1994. If it seems Coster-Waldau (the targeted womanizer in Cassavetes’ last film, the cliched comedy The Other Woman, 2014) isn’t trying hard enough, an object constantly being acted upon rather than a protagonist moving the narrative along. It's a pity considering Coster-Waldau has proven to be adept at grizzled personas (such as 2017's Shot Caller). Meanwhile, his co-star Maika Monroe often feels like she’s trying too hard. Attempting to persuade us into believing Case’s weary determination as a way to avenge what she’s lost, Monroe’s characterization feels like Linda Hamilton trying on a Susan Tyrell template, and we never quite settle into believing the troubling juxtaposition of her reality.
More of a distraction is Karl Glusman as the enigmatic drug dealer turned cult leader, though the silliness of the upside down crosses tattooed on his face hardly allow him to channel the hypnotic power allegedly held by someone like a Charles Manson. The hunt for Cyrus creates a handful of more enigmatic characters, such as Jamie Foxx’s surprisingly helpful Ferryman, a one-armed man with vitiligo who appears to pity Case. Another is the flamboyant Errol Grey played by Jonathan Tucker. Meanwhile, we’re also treated to a somewhat neglected subplot involving Bob’s partner John Lee, played by Paul Johansson, and his leery wife, Maureen, giving January Jones a rather unconvincing chance to play a boozy trophy wife, whose adultery was one of the twin catalysts resulting in the abduction of Gabi. What’s most striking to note is how most of the film’s extreme violence is enacted against every single woman in the film to an effect which feels like maximum overdrive. Not one of them avoids being beaten to a pulp, shot point blank in the head, or being sexually assaulted (sometimes a combination of all three). To conjure Sterling Hayden in Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing (1956), all their faces are slapped (or punched or stabbed or shot) to hamburger meat. While their male counterparts hardly remain unscathed, the violence enacted against women solidifies the film’s exploitative merits as a piece of filmmaking which dares us to look away rather than properly forcing us to engage with the realities or ramifications of what these culturally prevailing images mean.
Teran (who also penned The Creed of Violence, which at one point was destined to be a directorial vehicle for Todd Field) certainly concocted a doozy of a B grade genre narrative (purportedly claiming to be based on actual events). But if one were to follow the logic of Pink’s pop lyric contribution “God is a DJ/Life is a dance floor,” then if “God Is a Bullet,” life is an endless shooting range, where everyone ends up filled with lead. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t quite reach the requisite nihilism to make this feel impactful.
★★1/2☆☆☆