Vin Diesel Stars as 90s Valiant Comics Character ‘Bloodshot’ in Debut Trailer

Vin Diesel has his strengths as an action movie star and the good movies he's in usually play to those strengths: Stoicism, driving a car, extreme sports, and so on. When a film asks him to do that thing that so often eludes him—which is to, you know, act—it's almost always a recipe for disaster. Anytime they've attempted to build a franchise around him, the result has been awful. Fast & Furious became a franchise despite him, moving on in 2003 without him before eventually welcoming him back to the fold.

Like xXx and The Last Witch Hunter and Chronicles of Riddick and Babylon A.D. and The Pacifier and Find Me Guilty, the new flick Bloodshot seems doomed to fail because they are once again attempting to rely on Diesel to create a compelling enough character to carry multiple films. Nevertheless, like most of those movies, they'll figure out a way to make this a franchise too. Why else would Sony buy this property—whose relevance peaked two decades ago, I might add—unless they thought they could parlay it into an eventual cinematic universe to rival the MCU?

Much like his beloved character Dominic Toretto, Vin Diesel is best when he stays in his lane. The slightest deviation and, well, you've seen the results. Bloodshoot blasts its way into theaters on February 21, 2020.