Orlando Bloom in Retaliation

'Orlando Bloom captivates as a troubled soul with vengeance on his mind.'

It's always a bit of a balancing act for me to present on screen nudity, which was not motivated by the desire of the film maker to erotically stimulate the audience.  This comes up frequently for me with scenes of rape and sexual assault. That's currently the case with Orlando Bloom nude scene in Retaliation.

Bloom's character Malky is a demolition work, whose life receives a seismic shock, when out with friends at a local pub, sees a disturbing figure from his past, a man he holds responsible for a traumatic childhood incident. Fueled by anger, Malky sets out on a path of vengeance--and discovers that no one can escape the consequences of their sins in this taut thriller.

Retaliation was actually filmed back in 2017, but is only now being released.  I'm hoping that means Bloom's tattoo's were temporary, for the film only. I'm guessing they are, especially given Bloom's famous paparazzi nudes, were shot just a year earlier.  Bloom didn't struggle however with the nudes for the film and explains why to ET Canada in the quotes below.

'It was really just what was required,; Bloom explained of his decision to get naked. 'I didn’t think about the nudity aspect. I just thought about what was required in the moment to get the job done. We talked about the shots and the nudity aspect and how it served the character and the truth of the moment. I was focused more on that and obviously, I put a lot of trust in the directors, who were new and young, and had the greatest sincerity. They knew the writer very well, and their approach to the material was with real sensitivity and care. So, I felt I was serving the moment more than I was thinking about the fact that there was nudity.'

'With the sex, you see very clear how damaged Malky is, and how his damage plays out in the relationships in his life, particularly with women,” he continued. “His fear of intimacy, his fear of closeness, the animalistic way with which he approaches sex, and the shame around that, it’s all very palpable in the script. It’s very clear to me what was required, and then a lot of what I had gleaned from different organizations that I spoke to about male sexual abuse, it was reading up around it and researching around it. You can understand how and why people do things the way they do.'