Bullet in the Head (2008) User Reviews (4)

Rosales move (too far?) s in the direction of greater austerity: no dialogue

[Chris Knipp · 6/10 · 25 September 2008]

Rosales' Bullet in the Head (Tiro en la cabeza) is in his words shot more or less "in the working style of wildlife documentaries" about an apparently "normal guy"--specifically a tall, somewhat heavy-set middle aged Spanish guy--who appears to be going about his existence, hanging out with friends, using the ATM, having sex with a girlfriend, buying a newspaper, chatting with a shopkeeper, listening to music in a CD store, attending a dinner party, making a call from a pay phone. Then he goes on a drive with another guy from Spain into France. There, abruptly, he and the other guy run out of a cafeteria where they are eating with a woman, chasing two young men. They trap them in their car and shoot them. Then they split up, the main guy with the lady friend stealing a car from a woman and taking it to a woods where they leave her tied to a tree.

Rosales was inspired by a news story last year about three members of the Basque separatist group ETA who killed two policemen in France in "an accidental encounter." The festival blurb describes Bullet in the Head as "a claustrophobically intense, avant-garde thriller. We ...see and hear everything from a distance," the blurb goes on, "forced to assemble the movie's disparate narrative pieces for ourselves as we go along, like detectives on the trail of a dangerous conspiracy. Who is this man and who are his associates? And what are they plotting? A mystery movie in the purest sense, the remarkable Bullet in the Head will keep you pinned to the edge of your seat from its beguiling opening frames all the way to its startling conclusion." Though admirers of the director may find favor here again,this is a concept film that fails to live up to its festival blurb, and therefore leaves some viewers feeling cheated. To begin with, there is one little detail this description leaves out. Though the film has lots of ambient noise, there is only one moment in the whole thing when there is any dialogue. That's when the two men run out to the parking lot after the two young guys they've spotted: one of the men says "f---ing cops!" That's it. "Forced to assemble the movie's disparate narrative pieces for ourselves"? We cannot. We never learn who any of the people are. This film, very quickly becomes numbingly boring to watch. It's like seeing through the eyes of a surveillance camera. But even that is not done convincingly, if these are meant be seen as the observations of, say, a detective. It is all shot in good looking 35 mm. Though the main character is seen from a distance, the positions from which he is observed are not particularly plausible for a detective doing a surveillance. It's just weird long-lens camera-work, without sound. You could make up a series of stories about the people and the protagonist's activities, but why bother? Anything would work. There is no "mystery" and there is no solution. It all leads up to a senseless act. Rosales says that in the news story the ETA men killed the police "in an accidental encounter." That doesn't quite fit with what happens here--or maybe it does; it depends on what you mean by "accidental encounter." Evidently the ETA men think the two young men--who could be cops--are following, or watching them. But then the cops--if that's who they are--leave the cafeteria. In fact they're sitting not too far from the ERA guys, eating and chatting normally. Odd behavior if they were following the ETA guys. So if the ETA guys go out and kill them, it's sheer paranoia. So the events are not so much mysterious as inexplicable, and this is not the way a thriller or a mystery works. This is more like a conceptual art piece that might be exhibited in a museum, though somehow it would seem pointless even in that context.

Not every film that is "different" is so for any purpose. Those who come to see this in a festival will feel cheated. That happens sometimes, perhaps because occasionally the blurbs for festival films are written by people who have not seen the films, or who have overactive imaginations. For Spanish viewers, who might detect Basque undertones, it might be more exciting. But that is speculation. For the general viewer, it seems a cheat, something that may be fun to debate for a while, but nothing you'd want to recommend to anyone--unless they made liberal use of the Fast Forward button. Remember how Truman Capote said of Jack Kerouac, "That's not writing; it's typing"? "This isn't film-making', some will say; " it's filming." 'Bullet in the Head' has conceptual interest, but seems a dead end.

Normal Activity

[Rectangular_businessman · 1/10 · 9 July 2012]

There were many movies that were accused of "don't having a plot" or that "nothing" happened on them, but none of those movies deserves those kind of criticism so much as this movie: It literally don't a have a real plot, and nothing happens for most of the movie (Like the 99% of it) At least in "Paranormal Activity" or in any of those "found-footage" movies some stuff happened. This movie, in the other side, feels pretty much undirected, as if the filmmaker just didn't care very much about this movie, and just let the camera running.

This movie is the ultimate example of lazy filmmaking and amateurish cinema. I never saw such an uninspired and unconvincing attempt of "realism" in my life before.

This movie is a big nothing.

0/10

Imperfect but much needed experiment.

[velvethighpeace · 7/10 · 30 October 2008]

Already in production when Rosales got several Goya awards for the outstanding "La soledad", "Tiro en la cabeza" echoes another experiment made by Alan Clarke in the late 1980s called "Elephant". It is a cold, austere work that doesn't allow the viewer to feel for or identify with the characters for most of its duration. Rosales makes sure of this by using an almost surveillance-like camera-work. It all feels very distant. Sound-wise, the Spanish filmmaker keep us away from the dialogue too; politically mistreated and overexploited feature in the Basque conflict that, although present in the film, we don't have access to. The general decontextualization and the suppression of the ideological element in the film help to accentuate the absurdity in the final events. Overall, an imperfect but much needed both exploration of the possibilities of cinema and view on the Basque conflict.

A bold and innovative piece of cinema

[MOscarbradley · 8/10 · 27 May 2017]

With "Bullet in the Head" Jaime Rosales has made a film that is told entirely in images. There is a lot talking in the picture but none of it is heard; he is keeping his audience at a distance, both literally and metaphorically, allowing us to see events unfold but keeping us far enough away that we can't hear what the characters are saying. What we do hear is the background noise of everyday life. This is 'realism' gone overboard. Often the film feels like a documentary, like something Frederick Wiseman might have made but with all dialogue removed.

You may ask what the point of it all is. Why tease us like this? Why set up situations in which we can play no part? In actuality would we be interested enough in any of these people to want to spend this amount of time just looking at them? But then consider how often we may have looked at someone on a bus or on a train or simply walking down the street and wondered what might be going on in their lives? How often have we simply looked at strangers on a regular basis and felt we knew them? Of course, sustaining our interest is the problem. Since for about three quarters of the film's length nothing actually 'happens' this relatively short film, (85 minutes), might seem interminable and it's clearly aimed at the kind of art-house audience who will 'put up with it', forcing themselves to go along with what is clearly an experimental film.

As well as a lack of dialogue there is also no music score though Rosales does at least give us a single central character to follow. The title, of course, provides the clue and that's what keeps us watching. Audiences will always hold on when there's an anticipation of violence though any synopsis of the film that might suggest a thriller is clearly misleading. This certainly won't be to everyone's taste but it does represent the work of a bold and innovative filmmaker who remains shamefully undervalued. Cinema needs more artists like Rosales.