“Bullet” (1996) stars Mickey Rourke and Tupac Shakur as gangland rivals on a tragic collision course.

Image courtesy of New Line Cinema

Luke's List

An ongoing semi-regular series wherein Leader staff writer Luciano “Luke” Marano highlights films unfairly overlooked, depressingly underappreciated, and bizarrely compelling, all ripe for rediscovery.

Bullet (1996)

Directed by Julien Temple

Rated R

“You are not in the position to say who goes and who stays.”

The film career of the late, great Tupac Shakur is frustrating to consider, fraught with promising peaks and disappointing dells alike. One longs to see the career that might have been.

In many ways, his screen life mirrors that of the equally iconic and similarly doomed Marilyn Monroe. Were they truly great actors, or fascinating people made more mesmerizing by being cut down tragically soon? The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long and all that.

Maybe it doesn’t matter. Even their lesser performances are undeniably interesting and have been analyzed by critics more qualified than I. But, that being said, “Bullet,” a 1996 crime drama released just a month after Shakur’s murder (which pits him against a seemingly authentically drug-ravaged Mickey Rourke) deserves more attention. Though not the best performance in the filmography of either man, it’s a strange and heartfelt story of obligation, regret, addiction, and the limits of free will in a world resigned to less-sad endings being the best-case scenario.

One family that could probably benefit from a forced holiday apart courtesy of COVID is unquestionably the Stein clan of Brooklyn. Angry drunken Dad and downtrodden Mom are constantly at odds with the youngest of their adult children, Adrien Brody, a pretentious graffiti artist and budding criminal, and halfway terrified of their oldest, an unstable Vietnam vet with a penchant for collecting weapons and conducting midnight recon trips around the neighborhood (a truly amazing and unhinged performance by Ted Levine).

Then, Bullet comes home.

Rourke, the middle brother, is a convict and junkie just released from prison after serving an eight-year sentence for robbery. He wastes no time in returning to his old ways: Less than an hour after getting out from behind bars, Bullet mutilates a dealer working for Shakur, his hated rival, immediately reigniting their long-running feud and putting the two men irrevocably on a one-way road to a bloody showdown.

Shakur is too arch here to be truly great, the performance at times seeming like his unimpressed impression of Tony Montana. He’s a merciless ghetto-bred Captain Ahab cruising the streets ensconced in the back of a limo, sipping Champagne and searching for his white whale, the only man who ever hurt him and lived. Rourke stabbed him in the eye once, years ago, and he’s understandably upset. But it’s affecting his business, this obsession, and worrying his cronies. That Rourke is still breathing at all is losing him respect throughout the city.

Not that Rourke is trying to hide. In fact, he seems dead-set on forcing a confrontation, almost as if he wants to die. Beset by regret and angry with himself for his bad choices and missed opportunities, worried about what will become of his troubled and sensitive little brother, Rourke oscillates wildly between the zen-like peace of the hopeless and brutal outbursts of rage. The drugs aren’t helping either.

Shot mostly in Brooklyn, the film is a gritty, authentic look at a very, very different New York City, one as long gone as Shakur himself at this point. Both Brody and Levine are excellent here, and I especially enjoy the subplot about how Levine has gathered the children of his neighborhood into a kind of cultish militia which he can “train” and at which he can direct his seemingly endless political and philosophical monologues. Also, look out for an early appearance by Peter Dinklage. 

Rourke is one of my all-time favorite actors, and when he’s good there are few better. But, like that especially bright friend of yours who just can’t seem to pull their life together, he confounds with regular bouts of bad choices, both on and off the screen.

This film falls short of his best work but sees him embody a believable character who shares many of his own worst traits. When his mother finds him on a swing in the backyard in the middle of the night, bloodied and broken from yet another street fight, his apology for the terrible things he has done is gutting.

Shakur, already a ghost himself when this film hit screens and well on his way to being an icon, swaggers, shouts and smirks his way through what could so easily have been a simple stock performance with an unmistakable hint of pathos glinting in his narrowed eye.

There are no heroes here, he seems to be saying. Only less-bad guys and those of you lucky enough to get another chance at all this tomorrow.