It’s tempting to stay with Bullet in the Head to the very end, just to see if someone really does get one in the noggin, even though you get a sense after five minutes that writer-director Jaime Rosales is mostly taking aim at us—and half-assedly at that. Throughout the film, a seemingly normal guy goes about his rudimentary day, conversing with pals inside parks and cafés, drinking beer and coffee, sexing up a woman before meeting again with a familiar face for more seemingly idle chit chat and laughs. Rosales captures all of this from an attractive and frequently obscured distance, but regardless of whether his characters are actually sitting or standing behind glass windows or doors, or out in the open (even inside a car that takes them from Basque Country to France), you won’t hear a single word that comes out of their mouths—only the extraneous sounds of the world around them. It’s as if the film was seemingly intended for the deaf, but even if you can speak Spanish and read lips, it’s unlikely you’ll learn anything of great significance about their lives and wants. Hell, even without knowledge of the film being based on a December 2007 account of three ETA terrorists who killed two policemen in France, you’ll likely arrive at the same point: That killers go to parks and cafés and drink beer and coffee and like to fuck just like the rest of us. This shit ain’t deep, essentially the equivalent of a news story where the facts are still forthcoming, and if you think Rosales is seriously out to toy with the movie-going audience’s need to know the truth, I’m guessing you probably have a taste for Russian Roulette.
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