BULLET (R)
Director: Julien Temple
Stars: Mickey Rourke, Tupac Shakur, Ted Levine, Adrien Brody
A rather grim and downbeat look at a family destroyed by the spectre of hard drugs and brutal street crime, Bullet is
something of a disappointing mess, and offers further evidence of the downward spiral that Mickey Rourke's career has
taken over the past couple of years. Bullet was released straight to video in the States, a fate that seems to have befallen most
of Rourke's latest films, and the big mystery is why this unlikeable and unrelentingly bleak piece of crap didn't suffer the same
fate here.
Recently released from prison, Butch "Bullet" Stein (Rourke) returns to the tough streets of his neighbourhood, instantly
looking for trouble with Tank (the late Tupac Shakur in one of his last film appearances), a vicious black drug dealer who
controls the streets through fear and intimidation. Before going to prison, Butch took out one of Tank's eyes, and the drug
dealer is looking for revenge. Butch moves back into his family home, but his family are a dysfunctional lot and he has trouble
adjusting to the ordinary and bland routine of everyday life. His father is still resentful of the fact that Butch squandered the
potential he showed as a promising junior baseball player, throwing lucrative scholarships away for a life of petty crime. His
older brother (played with an unnerving manic touch by Ted Levine, from Silence Of The Lambs) is a psychologically scarred
former Vietnam veteran who lives in a shabby and paranoid world that few can enter, while younger brother Rudy (Adrien
Brody) is a naturally gifted artist who squanders his potential. Butch and his brothers become embroiled in a looming territorial
gang war with Tank, but the anticipated showdown between the pair is something of an anti-climax.
Bullet is strange material for British director Julien Temple (best known for The Great Rock N Roll Swindle and Earth Girls
Are Easy, etc), and he seems more interested in style over substance here, giving the film a look of gritty realism. His
distinctive visual style also occasionally gives this dire contemporary urban tale the look and texture of a gangsta rap video clip.
Temple offers numerous cutaways to scenes of passing trains, and one can only guess if this is meant to be some kind of
metaphor for Butch's one-way journey through the endless cycle of life and death that is an integral part of the New York
slums.
The film's quite potent anti-drugs message gets lost beneath the flash visuals and the graphic and unnecessarily brutal violence.
Rourke mumbles and shuffles his way through this mess, in a low key Brandoesque "I coulda been a contender" performance.
Shakur, however, brings a nasty undercurrent of malevolence to his role as Tank, and his performance is the only positive in a
film that has few redeeming features.