Writer/Director Nick Cassavetes channels the same grit of Alpha Dog for his latest, God Is a Bullet, adapted from Boston Teran‘s based-on-true-events best-selling novel. Only this time, the filmmaker doubles down on the bone-shattering violence… and the runtime. God Is a Bullet uses the sleazy criminal world, a talented pair of leads, and visceral violence to offset a straightforward narrative.

Bob Hightower (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) lives a simple life in an affluent suburban town. He’s a desk cop and a doting dad who still has a close relationship with his ex-wife. That changes when Bob finds his ex-wife brutally murdered and his teen daughter kidnapped by an insidious, satanic cult. The only lead to finding them comes from Case Hardin (Maika Monroe), a former cult member turned escapee. Case sees Bob’s predicament as a chance for closure, particularly when sparing his daughter from her fate. The pair embark on a dangerous bid to stop cult leader Cyrus (Karl Glusman, Watcher) once and for all and retrieve Bob’s daughter before it’s too late.

The first act in the lengthy 2.5-hour thriller plunges Bob, and the viewer by proxy, into the deep end of Case’s nihilistic world, a seedy underbelly of depravity. Cassavetes captures the brutal sexual assault of Bob’s ex-wife and her subsequent murder with an unflinching eye, and it’s only the inciting event. As a prickly, assertive Case ruthlessly acclimates Bob to her world, flashbacks trace her traumatic past to her steely present. Only when Case seeks help from former pal The Ferryman (Jamie Foxx) does her icy demeanor thaw just enough for Bob to find common ground with his opposite.

Bob and Case’s tenuous alliance provides the foothold into this grisly revenge story, and that only deepens as their gruesome, grim encounters with various members of Cyrus’s righthand enforcers yield more bloodshed. Maika Monroe impresses with a detached aloofness and strong will that makes Case laugh at her tormenter as he kicks her teeth out or willingly gives her body over to violence while giving glimpses of heartbreaking pathos buried beneath the heavily curated defense walls. Through Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s determined yet noble Bob, those walls slowly erode, resulting in a fascinating pair of protagonists that easily retain rooting interest no matter how far they venture into hell.

While the protagonists effectively get complex arcs over their harrowing journey, the same can’t be said for the antagonists. Cassavetes may have an eye for staging brutality that induces sympathy pains, and it builds to a breathtaking fireworks extravaganza of explosive violence in the third act; but the filmmaker mistakes violence for personality in his villains. Karl Glusman feels miscast as Cyrus. The actor nails intimidation through a highly volatile short fuse. Still, when surrounded by sleazier henchmen played by Ethan Suplee, Brendan Sexton III, Garrett Wareing, and Jonathan Tucker, it’s hard to grasp why the paper-thin villain has such a chokehold on the criminal underbelly. The cult aspect is not explored beyond quick flashes or glimpses of ritual aftermath. An argument could be made that it’s ultimately Bob and Case’s story, not Cyrus’s, but the lengthy runtime only highlights the hollowness of the villains.

God Is a Bullet is a gauntlet of gory, sometimes stomach-churning violence. Cassavetes only eases up enough to let the quieter character moments between Bob and Case breathe before throwing them into the dark, black abyss of even more unthinkable violence. The filmmaker’s staging and the natural charm and charisma of Coster-Waldau and Monroe, no matter how buried under grit and tattoos, offsets the otherwise familiar setup. It’s visually engaging, but its runtime only exposes the underdeveloped story facets and characters. Even more so with a lengthy epilogue tonally at odds with the rest of the grimy feature. It makes for an uneasy yet fascinating watch, and Cassevetes’ approach to the violence ensures a cult following for this cultish revenge tale.

God Is a Bullet releases in theaters on June 23, 2023.