Bullet to the Head
Directed by Walter Hill
- action
- crime
- thriller
The story
After watching their respective partners die, a cop and a hitman form an alliance in order to bring down their common enemy.
What it’s like
Gritty, saturated New Orleans nights, all sweat, rain-slick asphalt and sodium-yellow streetlight, shot with a workmanlike handheld rawness that favours blunt two-shots and quick cuts over lingering beauty. The palette runs to murky browns, cold steel blues and the flat glare of dive-bar fluorescents, and the score is a throbbing synth-and-guitar pulse that surges into the shootouts. Its vibe is grimy, testosterone-heavy and hard-boiled, the sort of film that feels best late at night with the volume up. Pacing is brisk and punctuated by bursts of brutal, heavily stylised gunfire and fistfights, with bloody wounds and profanity throughout, so this is definitely not gentle viewing. Emotionally it is more brusque than tender: an aging hitman and a weary detective, both bitter and wary, grudgingly learn to trust one another as they hunt the corrupt men who killed their partners. It suits viewers who want old-school buddy-cop grit, unfussy violence and a rough-edged, no-nonsense alliance.
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