Leigh Whannell's Upgrade took the done-to-death Robocop/Venom story (a killed cop or war hero or aggrieved boyfriend is resurrected with super-enhancements) and brought it back to high-octane life, so it's possible, but Bloodshot, this big screen launch of a Valiant extended universe, tries to tell the same story, throwing in some memory manipulation stuff, but this turns Vin Diesel's Bloodshot into a hard-to-care-about automaton and turns the villain into a kind of Kermit the Frog, a beset "memory" theatre show producer - in a movie that feels more dated than 1987's Robocop with a seen-it-all-before male notion of cool (slow-motion swaggering and Blue Steel pouts as the superhumans disperse smoke grenades and slam fists into concrete), delivered with scenes of tired universe-building exposition, some not very Marvel-lous attempts at humour, in cheap-looking studio lots or against lifeless cgi backdrops.
★★☆☆☆
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