Well the first (Cosmic) Sin has been casted...

Hooo boy, I've done it again. Made a terrible decision late at night when honestly I should have gone to bed. 'But it's Australia day tomorrow, I'm not on air til late, I can have a sleep in...and watch Cosmic Sin with Bruce Willis on Netflix!'

The idea was solid until I hit that last bit..

After quite a busy day at work, an anniversary dinner (celebrating one year here in Albury) and then back to work to finish things off, I'll admit that the part of my brain that usually deals with logical decisions decided to take annual leave. So all I could sum up by the time I landed on the title screen for Cosmic Sin was 'Bruce in some weird power armour...this should be...uh...okay?'

I mean he rocked in The Fifth Element - simply based on that and ruling out the bajillion things that have happened since then,  this should be at least passible yes?

Er no.

Strap yourself in because the confusion starts as soon as you hit play. (Warning: Spoilers. So many spoilers. I'm literally drowning this post in spoilers so you don't have to watch it and save yourself an assault on your mental health. You're welcome.)

OHMAGGERD, ALIENS!

The year is 2524 so 502 years from now. Covid doesn't seem to be a thing anymore but pick up trucks and flannel are the ride and garb of choice. Humanity has been a busy little species in that time, colonising Mars (which fails) and then working out what went wrong and colonising Zafdie and Ellora, wherever they are (I wouldn't be surprised if those names came from the Directors two favourite maths teachers. Or maybe their kids.) Zafdie rebels, some lunatic drops a bomb on them wiping out all seventy million and loses his pension in the process. Don't worry, we'll get to meet this lunatic soon enough.

Out in the middle of nowhere on Ellora, two colonists are about to get frisky in a tent when they hear something skulking around outside. Eventually the horny male of the pair detaches himself long enough to wander outside with an assault rifle and proceeds to wildly fire bullets into the darkness. Because obviously in 2524 bullets are as free flowing as flannel. 'Nope, nothing there!' he reports before he wanders into more darkness, empties even more bullets into 'something' and is never heard of again. Meanwhile the female of the pair radios the equivalent of Alien 911 to report a possible first contact. 'Is it a positive or negative first contact for both parties?' the operator continually asks.
I mean how could a horny colonist emptying his gun at you be anything less than friendly?

But the warning is sent and relayed down to Earth where General Ryle (Frank Grillo) is having his one day off of the year and of course it's interrupted by a possible alien sighting. In his 2524 pickup which looks amazingly like something out of the 90's he decides 'Well we better do something then' and makes his way to the base where they'll get to interrogate some of the people who had a beer with alien life or something. Oh and he also decides that one of the best people to help out here would have to be the lunatic who once blew up 70 million people. 
And lost his pension in the process.

That would be The Blood General aka General Ford aka Bruce Willis who for some strange reason likes to spend his time at a military base bar even though he was discharged from active duty years ago and most of the soldiers in there have a hankering to punch his face in. Non descriptive virtual country music plays, the lump of parts that make up the robotic bartender spills drinks everywhere and surprise surprise, a group of soldiers decide to punch his head in. 

But it's okay though because a) He's used to this treatment b) he was following orders (which he apparently gave himself) and c) he has some kind of shit kicking minder flunky hanging out with him most of the time? Here we get introduced to Dash:

Dash provides some extra fists, some wit, the film's worst pick up attempt and the finest 80s faux fur lining ready to help the Blood General out with whatever he needs. Why? We don't know. But since Bruce is phoning this one in so much, it's Dash's job to provide the levity. He tries I guess which is something..

Some soldiers come in, order the place to cool their heels and invites Bloodthumper, sorry Blood General to come back to base because there's been a possible alien sighting. Dash tags along 'Because we're a package deal' Upon hearing that alien life may exist, Blood Demon tells those in charge that he's going to need a Q Bomb.

Yes that's right, his first reaction to the possibility of other life in the universe is to arm the same type of bomb that sucked 70 million rebels into a black hole. No olive branch or exchanging of ideas, no gaining intelligence first, he kicks straight into the 'Well aliens = bomb time.' And gets approval for one instantly because apparently making one of these bombs takes about as long as a pint of Guinness to settle. And is slightly smaller than a pint glass apparently. 
Oh and his ex wife is a first contact expert (even though there hasn't been a first contact event yet) and happens to be on base. Right. I almost forgot that.

Blood Duster, ex wifey and sidekick are ordered to wait until Grillo Ryle finally gets his high tech pick up to the base car park and while that happens, the ship they've been waiting for Ellora arrives and a bunch of non talking people are marched off to quarantine.
Which in this base is actually just another room where a bored guy with a hose stands. Oh and there's two guards on the outside who fail guard duty completely, not bothering to watch the alien shenanigans erupting behind them.

Because the reason they can't talk? They're all possessed by aliens who are probably wondering what every part they're controlling now actually does even though later on we find out the aliens look bang on humanoid shape anyway. They jerk around, spew acid into the guards face, cough up metal hairballs (I kid you not) and naturally a nasty firefight breaks out across the base between the new arrivals who couldn't move a leg properly seconds ago but who have now mastered the instant art of firearms and rookie base team who couldn't hit a target if they were strapped to one. With people dying all around them, it's up to General Blood Kicker to save the day...so he wanders off to find something big and nasty in the armoury. Ryle finally shows up to lend a hand, Bruce wanders back in with some kind of cannon and now there's so much paperwork to fill out because over 50 people were killed. Whoops. 

But they'll have to deal with this later because they need to drop a bomb on some aliens first. And they're not waiting for permission from the rest of the world neither because a) It's kill or be killed and b) Blood Monger gets his pension back if he helps out. They're going to beam over to Ellora, work out where a downed alien ship came from and express post a Q Bomb over to them with their regards. Game time baby!

Now the woman who poured the Guinness earlier, sorry I mean armed the bomb? She seems to be some kind of bomb whisperer because the tube seems to get angry when any of the other idiot soldiers have a play. So whether she likes it or not, she's coming along. Time to suit up and get strapped into the most useless armour in existence.  
Luckily they saved Blood Churner's old orange wreck so he can squeeze himself into it once more. Ryle gets black armour because he's a bad ass and sidekick, bomb girl, bar retrieval dude, ex wifey and Ryle's son get stock standard white.

Oh yeah Ryle's son is coming to because he's on the base and won't take no for an answer from dad. Of course!  

Scotty Someone beams them up and in a fantastic example of 'Who could have predicted this?' instead of landing on the planet, the land slightly outside the planet and in the middle of a big ship fight between the good guys and the alien ones. Who is who? No idea but someone who suddenly appeared in the middle of the chaos cooly remarks 'It's a massacre'. That probably doesn't bode well for humanity then but at least this scene looks pretty good. Like it's an every day occurrence, they fly through the pitched battle but not without issue - Kyle, sidekick and ex-wifey goes missing, Blood and Decker overshoots the mark and lands away from everywhere else and the rest of them land okay with just enough time to appreciate the local flora and fauna and work out who didn't make it here alive before they're shot at by a pack of aliens who look strangely like bad Lord of the Rings Wraith cosplayers looking for a convention to attend. Luckily the Calvary arrive in the form of some of the local Ellora soldiers and an ex-wrestler touting a laser cannon, but not before one of team white is nailed right in the neck.

Initially I thought 'With hair like that, she's got to be some kind of a performer somewhere. Maybe a rapper I'm unaware of?' and I was partly right - that's Lana from the WWE, bringing more firepower to the table than team space jump thought to. Discovering they're not aliens, Lana and Ryle Jnr go and find the downed ship (even with the warning 'The place is swarming with aliens') while the others get invited back to the local base to take advantage of their med bay. They find the ship with a few aliens kicking the tires...er...gravity pods? and proceed to have a conversation at normal levels because the aliens are obviously deaf and tired of turning around. Taking cover and keeping your voice level down isn't such a big thing in 2524 it seems.

Now remember the metal fur ball one alien coughed up earlier?  Apparently that's some kind of signal jamming thing and the invaders must have been coughing up one hell of a lung full because even though they've worked out where the ship came from (must have been one hell of a radiation trail that thing gave off - possibly bigger than Chernobyl) they can't actually send that info to anyone who can use it unless they're in space because there's that much lung matter now littering the landscape.

'Oh well, maybe we should rescue the blood donkey instead?' Soldier boy muses. (Yes I know, that's not a 100% direct transcribe right there...)

'Blood Discus? I want to buy that man a drink!' It turns out our wrestler's character has a thing for men phoning it in who like to throw galaxy tearing bombs about.

And this dear friends is where things really go strange. 
Yes, even more so if that was possible.

We learn that Blood Drinker had landed badly, woken up stunned and it met by a bunch of aliens hanging about (no seriously, one is actually hanging onto a tree) inviting him to chill the f**k out in a nearby cave.  So he stumbles in, things get blurry and it looks like he's affectionately holding some kind of store mannequin or something while a series of cuts and blurs try their hardest to show you what the last seconds of a dying fly would be like, having hit a windscreen at more than 100 kph and shunting its ass through its brain. 

Thankfully Kyle/Ryle jnr shows up and shoots something in the head before dragging the bewildered Blood Demon back to base. Where was the alien welcome party from earlier? Probably wandered off to stare blankly at a downed ship knowing this movie. They get inside and we go from strange to 'What in the flying f**k is a going on here?' in record time.

That's Bleck (I'm sure they should have renamed him Bleak after what happens here) on the left, the guy who originally fished the Blood Bearing out of the bar after the fight died down. He's the guy who got shot before Lana turned up to rail gun the world to death. We find him hanging on for dear life back at base. Blood Bundy spends all of ten seconds asking him how he is before grabbing what I could only guess was a canister of 1000 proof heroin and jabbing it into his leg, killing him within seconds. 

'But he was going to die anyway!' Blood Bastard points out, taking out both Bleck and the last nonexistent shred of likeability we faked having about his character.

Oh and then Dash walks in. Joy, Dash is back! Comic relief after Blood Bitch added a plus one to his already 70 mil strong death count. 

Wait...how did Dash get here?

'You don't want to know.' And even if we wanted to know, we never find out where he landed, how he finds the base and any roadblocks he hit along the way. Like possible aliens inviting people for a bit of cave diving. 

What makes this even worse is that he wrote part of this movie. The fact that we casually skip off his disappearance and carry on like nothing happened makes me wonder if they got to a part of filming where someone put their hand up and asked the question 'Hey, what happened to Dash in all of this?' and they went 'Shit, that's a good question' and threw this scene in last minute to fill a rather decent gap.
Oh and he wants out now. Something obviously happened out there, he now wants to cut and run and Blood Orange gives him his blessing.

I did wonder if maybe aliens possessed him and that's where he'd been? I mean that would go a long way in explaining his absence so far. But in the next scene he's talking to a lovable little girl who's dropped her mum's sunglasses and he doesn't try to eat or spit acid on her, so there's no obvious infestation there.

Is there girl the alien then? No, turns out she is not. Well fair enough then. In the brief practically one sided conversation he has with her, he changes his mind about running off (now he's doing it for the kids) which means the comic relief won't get possibly eaten just yet.

Right, so where were we? Oh yes, we've got to get this ship information into space. But while farting around back at base, bomb girl (I think it was her) discovers there's actually this giant portal thing above the planet - maybe they should shoot the very temperamental explosive device through that and fry the bad cos players on the other side? The downside to this obviously cunning plan however becomes quickly apparent - with the portal open it will kill then all on this side...sigh, if only there was someone up in space who could hel-

'GUYS, I'M UP IN SPACE!' - Ryle

Well isn't that convenient! Like a bit of breathing space junk, Grillo's still up and floating about and can help blow shit up if need be. Excellent! All they have to do is aim it just right through the space cannon (incredible how there's a space cannon just the right size for the angry bomb ready to go) and make sure the aliens don't fart on this earth saving plan in the meantime.

I missed the bit about them suddenly needing to defend the base (was there one?) but suddenly they need to take the last stand, defend said base and give bomb girl enough time to prime the cannon of wishful destruction. Luckily they have the Blood Barrel, Dash's jokes and Ryle Jnr as well as Rail Girl to make sure the aliens don't get close. 
Oh and a whole bunch of ready to die base extras who suspiciously look like the set building team. No armour for you guys, even though you're hanging about on a military base.

Hal opens up the pod bay door- whoops, wrong movie. Someone opens up the base door and there's a few tense moments of our characters attempting to look..er..something. Dash tries to be smooth with Lana while the aliens shuffle into view and play their trap card. They have Ex Wifey! Well more to the point someone's using Ex-Wifey's body as the 8:10 train to Alamein not stopping all stations and happily announces that they're actually enjoying the experiences. Through some blurry flashback action, it's revealed Blood Balloon was holding her body back in the cave and...er...left it there? Anyway New Wife 2.0 explains their race wants to wipe out humanity and battle begins with Lana plinking away from the top of the base with her Cannon from Hell. 

'Incoming artillery!' bomb girl informs when it's actually the least agile ships the world has even seen as miss WWE sends them spinning with a couple of well aimed blasts. Why they need anyone other than Miss Death Dealer and her boom stick is beyond me while a whole bunch of extras dressed in the most basic of flannel (there was no wardrobe budget outside of the space suits it seems) run to their deaths (someone else will have to pack up the sets now) and in the middle of everything Ex-Wifey and Blood Basketball disappear in the madness.

The bomb is fired, it's up up and away but before it can enter the circle of greater alien ship arrival in deep space, Ex-Wifey is there playing Silver Surfer on top of a space cruiser and stops it with her skin decaying at a rapid rate power. But of course a second later there's suddenly caring Ex-hubby Blood Busline to stop her and avenge the loss of someone he didn't give a shit about at the start of this film. A small cosmic explosion pulls them apart, the bomb goes flying through and before you can say 'wait, don't they need to close that thing?' there's another cannon projectile on it's way to Grillo's space suit.

Yes apparently he's worked out even with that extended time floating nowhere, he should have enough juice left in the suit tank to blow up a portal big enough to send a few warships through. He'll just hug one part of it long enough for the latest shell to ruin his day and that should be job done. The portal will close, the bomb will go off and his son will still be alive...

...but furiously angry of course. Having watched the shell hurtle towards his dear old dad's doom, Ryle Jnr takes out his fury on the nearest alien and beats him senseless like Connor McGregor taking on a bus for a few minutes. It's not going to bring dad back obviously but he was the enemy commander so that's at least one loose end they have to tie up.

The portal blows up. The aliens blow up. Humanity cheers and then a few days later...

We're back in the same bar again! Yes Earth's one and only virtual country music near an army base bar it seems and it's a mini reunion of those who saved the world. Mini Ryle and bomb girl are cosying up together because nothing brings two people closer together than playing with space cannons and beating Lord of the Ring wraiths to death. Rail Gun Girl is there too looking strangely out of place no longer toting around 8 feet of arsenal. Naturally Dash is there - maybe he'll have better luck with the ladies now? 

But then wouldn't you know it?  Standing at the end of the bar, reflecting on lost love...it's the Blood Goblin!

Yes the last time we saw Blood Barricade it was floating off into deep space courtesy of a mini explosion he and the body of his dead wife caused. And yet here he is, alive and well and having that drink she'd suggested they have after all had calmed down. Only she's not there of course and even if she was, the bouncer would take one look at her now bleached to hell alien facial features and grunt a customary 'Not tonight love.'

But hey, at least the Blood Bazooka is alive. Woe betide any aliens stupid enough to try and invade us again. And woe betide my sanity if a Cosmic Sin 2 sequel is ever green lit by Netflix.. 

1/5