God Is a Bullet (2023)

1 Star (out of 4)

Creeps of Faith

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

The vile, nihilistic, merciless crime drama God Is a Bullet takes a painful 155 minutes to tell us that there's no hope in the world, while showing women repeatedly punched in the face, and people's faces shot off.

Small town, God-fearing police officer Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has his life turned upside down when his ex-wife is murdered and his teen daughter Gabi (Chloe Guy) is abducted by a satanic cult. The only lead he has is Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), who herself was abducted and managed to escape.

She agrees to help, but insists that the only way it can work is if they go undercover. They meet The Ferryman (Jamie Foxx), who whips up fake IDs and covers Bob in tattoos. But no matter how determined Bob is, nothing can prepare him for the insane viciousness of cult leader Cyrus (Karl Glusman).

From Nick Cassavetes, the director of — of all things — The Notebook, God Is a Bullet comes from a novel (by Boston Teran), but the movie is so utterly depressing, artless, and pointless that it's hard to imagine what it was ever supposed to be about. The repeated violence aimed at women and young girls is, frankly, off the charts, and no amount of vengeance in the end can make up for it.

The main theme seems to be the destroying of Bob's small-town Christian values, making it known to him that religion is nothing more than a "club," or a drug, i.e. "needles waiting for people like us to stick it in." (When Bob's adventure is over, we see him dejectedly gulping a beer and dragging furiously at a cigarette.)

The absurd, oppressive running time is another huge flaw, and Cassavetes fails to use it to enrich his themes or deepen his characters. Even the loathsome Cyrus character isn't expanded anything past the one-dimensional psychopath he initially seems to be. The final, tacked-on moment is about as phony as an ending can get, making God Is a Bullet a thoroughly dispiriting experience.