Bullet Head (2017)

Bullet Head, a 2017 crime thriller from director Paul Solet, assembles Adrien Brody, John Malkovich, Antonio Banderas, and Rory Culkin in a Bulgarian warehouse for a heist gone wrong. The plot involves a stolen safe, a dogfighting ring, and a mastiff named DeNiro who serves as the film's most persistent antagonist. The cast is an international ensemble, but their presence is dictated by genre economics, not by a desire to check demographic boxes. The lone female character, Grace, exists as a romantic memory for Brody's Stacy, a distant shore he might sail toward if he ever stops committing felonies.

The film engages with none of the social concerns that have come to define the current cultural moment. There is no racial consciousness, no LGBTQ representation, no climate anxiety, no critique of capitalism, no body positivity, and no neurodivergence. Gage's opiate withdrawal is presented as substance abuse, a medical crisis, not a metaphor for neurodiversity. The criminals are criminals, the dog is a dog, and the violence is visceral. The film does have a faint animal cruelty undertone, but it never mounts a sustained sermon on the subject. It prefers to let the dog's suffering speak for itself, which is more than can be said for most contemporary cinema.

What we have here is a genre exercise, content to tell a story about desperate men and a dangerous animal. It does not lecture. It does not preach. It simply exists, a relic of a time when a thriller could be just a thriller. The film's highest aspiration is to make you flinch when the piano collapses. It succeeds at that. For those keeping score at home, this is a film that will not be cited in any discourse. It is, in its own modest way, a relief.