GOD IS A BULLET (2023)

Genre: Action/Thriller
Director: Nick Cassavetes
Cast: Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Maika Monroe, Jamie Foxx, Karl Glusman, January Jones, Paul Johansson, David Thornton
Runtime: 2 hrs
Rating: M18 (Violence and Coarse Language)
Released By: Shaw Organisation
Official Website:

Opening Day: 29 June 2023

Synopsis: GOD IS A BULLET follows detective Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who finds his ex-wife murdered and his daughter kidnapped by an insidious cult. Bob takes matters into his own hands and infiltrates the secretive cult to try to save his daughter. With the help of the cult’s only female victim escapee, Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), Bob and Case go down the rabbit hole with The Ferryman (Jamie Foxx) to save his daughter and find closure for Case from the cult – and its maniacal leader (Glusman) - that took so much away from her. 

Movie Review:

Instead of telling the story at an efficient 105 minutes or so, Nick Cassavetes has to spend an additional excruciating 50 minutes on God Is A Bullet, his latest big screen directorial effort after a long hiatus (his last helmed project was The Other Women in 2014).

Apparently, a passion project of Cassavetes, God Is A Bullet is based on pseudonymous American writer Boston Teran’s 1999 novel of the same name. Far more contradictory, the movie claims it’s based on a true story. Sadly it doesn’t matter in the end. The finished product in short is a simplistic crime drama disguised as a slow, arty action thriller.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stars as a deskbound small town cop, Bob Hightower who decides to investigate a case involving his own missing daughter, Gabi. The case however is much more complicated than expected though there is not much of a mystery element either. As the first act of the movie shows, a Satanic cult is responsible for the killing of Bob’s ex-wife and the kidnapping of his teenage daughter.

In comes Cash Hardin (Maika Monroe), a girl who managed to escape from the same Satanic cult and offers her assistance to Bob. Their plan believe it or not is to infiltrate the cult scene in order to track down sadistic cult leader, Cyrus (Karl Glusman) and the whereabouts of Gabi.

The glaring problem with Cassavetes’ scripting is that the movie takes a very long time to get from one point to another. The entire proceeding is stuffed with a redundant subplot involving Bob’s abusive colleague, flashbacks of Cash and a fellow female cult member, Lena and unnecessary amount of copious violence.

The supposedly crime drama also fails to establish a meaningful statement on child prostitution and religion. Yes, we hear that Cash was forced to commit crimes during her time in the cult and all the while, they keep referring everyone as “sheep”. But before anything is developed further, another vile and abusive sequence appears and we are treated to another disturbing visual, likely another woman character getting her face punched or a cult member getting horrendously shot at. There’s also an irritable drug dealer that keeps screaming his head off. And we all agree he needs to cross over real fast.

With a prosthetic arm and covered in tattoos, Jamie Foxx appears for less than 15 minutes here as “The Ferryman”, a fellow cult member with a heart of gold. He offers tattoo service, gun supplies and even medical treatment to Bob and Cash, he is basically the cult version of 7-11. Foxx is also listed as one of the producers which explained why he is too busy to appear longer on the screen.

Like your nearby coffee shop uncle, leading man Nikolaj Coster-Waldau just looks uninterested not exactly menacing or stoic enough to save his daughter. Perhaps Denzel Washington or Liam Neeson fits the role better. Maika Monroe deserved all the praise for all the hard work put in alas she needs a far more purposeful narrative.

As mentioned prior, God Is A Bullet should be a decent exploitative revenge flick to entertain the masses instead of being a tedious crime flick that tries hard to be smart and deep. Maybe Cassavetes should just stick to material liked The Notebook and John Q.

Movie Rating:

(Unnecessarily long and gory, it’s passable if you have both the time and stomach)

Review by Linus Tee