The sheer concept of a bloody thriller written and directed by Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook) should immediately raise hairs on the necks of anyone who's seen his work. Although solid enough as a director, grit and grisliness are hardly his bread and butter. At over two and a half hours long, God Is a Bullet proves that about as thoroughly as possible. Initially, the film's premise feels preachy and dramatic enough to fit right into Cassavetes's wheelhouse. Detective Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) struggles to gain respect from his family and colleagues, relying largely on his religious faith to get him through the day. Like any other religious protagonist in Hollywood, he soon finds his faith tested. Attempting to visit his daughter, Gabi (Chloe Guy), he finds only the brutally murdered bodies of her mother and stepfather. The police have few leads on the Manson-style murders, but a tattooed and trucker-mouthed young woman named Case Hardin (Maika Monroe) helps put Bob on the trail of a violent cult called the Left-Handed Path. The story of Bob and Case rescuing Gabi from cult leader Cyrus (Karl Glusman) should really take no more than 90 minutes to tell. The film's lengthy run time stems largely from the movie's incessant need to hammer viewers over the head with Case's atheistic nihilism. As Bob mopes around looking handsomely enraged in a way that only Coster-Waldau could achieve, Case eviscerates his faith with her not-so-hot takes on the similarities between Christianity and the Satanic criminals they're tracking down. She belabors her point so excessively that the inevitable title drop completely loses whatever gravity Cassavetes was hoping to achieve. If Cassavetes's only goal were to make a statement about religion that countless edgy high school students have already made more eloquently, that might be one thing. Unfortunately, his real goal seems to be driving his audience into complete and utter hopelessness. Nearly every woman in the film is abused, intoxicated, or both. A previously unknown cult leaves oceans of blood in their wake, yet the police are somehow powerless to collect useful evidence. Bob is the only character who maintains hope that good still exists in the world, and he's repeatedly punished for it. While Cassavetes usually excels when it comes to dialogue-heavy drama, God Is a Bullet ironically hits its peaks in the scenes that go just far enough over the top to elicit laughter. There's something oddly smile-inducing about the terrible digital effects used to make up for the limitations of practical fake blood, gallons of which seem to flood the screen in just about every violent encounter during the film's run time. Cartoonish cult members played by the likes of Ethan Suplee and Brendan Sexton III may not feel especially three-dimensional, but they add to the fun of the film. Most of all, the one scene in which a snake does methamphetamine feels like it could have been spun off into a beautiful spiritual successor to Cocaine Bear. Outside of the main drawbacks and the little pleasures, some aspects of the movie simply feel confusing and outdated. For instance, Errol (Jonathan Tucker) runs such a cliché biker bar that a few more neon lights might have made it feel like something out of Joel Schumacher's Batman movies. The Ferryman, a criminal good guy who tattoos Bob to help him better infiltrate the cult, feels like an out-of-place character whose only purpose is to have a cool name and waste Jamie Foxx in a role that never feels as important as it's initially made out to be. To the movie's credit, however, they don't waste Foxx half as badly as they waste January Jones, whose character could easily be cut without severely affecting the story. God Is a Bullet isn't a bad movie. It's just simply not a particularly good one. Action fans might rewatch it at home, but they'll find themselves fast forwarding to the scenes where the plot moves forward, which feel way too few and far between. In retrospect, maybe that Meth Snake movie would have actually been a better idea.
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