Review: Revenge

Kevin Costner (who produced the film) plays a fighter pilot who goes to Mexico to meet up with an old buddy (Anthony Quinn), whose life he once saved years ago. Unfortunately, said old buddy is a rich and powerful gangster who doesn’t take kindly to Costner screwing his young trophy wife (Madeleine Stowe, with a globe-trotting accent). Revenge is about to be served cold, bloody, and brutal. Costner is beaten and left for dead, Stowe also beaten but sent off to work in a brothel. When Costner has healed from his wounds...well, second verse, same as the first. Miguel Ferrer, James Gammon, Sally Kirkland, and a young John Leguizamo (as Ferrer’s Spanish-speaking offsider) all turn up as characters who aid Costner in his revenge.

This box-office bomb was directed by Tony Scott (“Top Gun”, “Déjà Vu”, “Man on Fire”) and scripted by Jeff Fiskin (“Crackers”, “Angel Unchained”) and Jim Harrison (“Wolf”, “Legends of the Fall”), from the latter’s own novella that surely must be better than what ended up on the screen. Painfully slow-paced, underwritten yet massively overblown, the film seems like two films in one. Both have wildly different pace and energy levels, neither much good, and when stitched together, create a crap film overall (whether in original form or the shorter Director’s Cut). At times it plays like a crap version of “Out of the Past”/“Against All Odds”.

Meanwhile, some seven years after “The Hunger”, Scott was still obsessed with blowing curtains. Sadly he forgot to include a lesbian seduction between Susan Sarandon and Catherine Deneuve, or a decaying David Bowie this time. Instead we’ve got the complete lack of chemistry between the two superficially attractive leads, Costner and Stowe. The former is handsome but stiff, and the latter (who looks alarmingly like a thin Nigella Lawson. The real deal is far sexier, though) is saddled with an awful accent (despite in real-life having a Costa Rican mother apparently), and a horribly misogynistic role (it really is quite disgusting and degrading) added to her already incompetent performance. I’m guessing Maria Conchita Alonso and Sonia Braga were busy at the time because Stowe (never much of an actress) is way out of her depth here. The film is horrendously slow, but because there’s no chemistry between the leads at all, the romance feels way too rushed. The sex (at least in the version I saw, I’m not even sure which cut it was, it seemed to be over two hours, but given how tedious it was...) comes way too late in the film to really work. In fact, so late is it that Scott is forced to give us practically three sex scenes one after the other right in the middle of the film, slowing the already deadening pace even further (Not to mention basically advertising an illicit and potentially deadly affair to the entire world). Because we haven’t had enough relationship-building scenes and the actors are incompatible, the sex just stands out like a sore thumb, too because without the build-up or foreplay, it’s just two people fucking like rabbits. I can go to porn for that, thanks Tony (The sex scene in a jeep- a moving one, with Costner driving!- is one of the most ridiculous sex scenes of all-time. At least there weren’t any blowing curtains in that one, though).

When you add in Anthony Quinn’s character, things get even worse. If Quinn weren’t made to look like a jerk and a brute from the beginning, it might’ve been better. But because he is that way (yes, he’s a proud man and Costner is a reckless jerk, but so what?), the betrayal doesn’t mean a damn thing. In fact, Quinn would be seen as deserving it. That does not, however, make the Costner and Stowe characters likeable. The lack of depth to their relationship makes them extremely unlikeable. As I said, it’s just two people fucking like rabbits, so they come off as callous and selfish, and frankly quite stupid.

But the romance is only half the problem, there’s a huge amount of time-wasting going on here to the point where I was questioning the existence of an editing process on this thing. There’s just too much unnecessary fluff going on, the story is too damn old and clichéd to be so damn slow and full of extraneous crap.  At the very least I would’ve started the film with Costner’s reunion with Quinn (i.e. Removed all the “Top Gun” shit at the beginning- Seriously, Tony even gives us nicknames on helmets again!), and either fleshed out the romance or cut some of that mid-section out altogether. The film would still be shit, but it’d be two times less shit.

There’s some decent acting outside of the two leads, but no one is able to salvage this mess. Anthony Quinn is flamboyantly over-the-top in a part that gives him no other choice, and by virtue of being lively, he’s one of the most memorable things in the film. He’s certainly trying his best. The second half of the film offers up even better performances from the underrated Miguel Ferrer and especially gruff-voiced James Gammon in the kind of role Slim Pickens used to play and walk off with the film. They’re terrific, but swimming upstream during an almighty flood.

The cinematography by Jeffrey L. Kimball (“Top Gun”, “Wild Things”, “The Expendables”) is somewhat interesting and perplexing. Essentially, it’s well-shot and pretty, but Scott and Kimball are completely obsessed with neon lighting to a ridiculous degree. It’s as if Scott was still on his gauzy, neon-lit, New Wave bent after “The Hunger”. Unfortunately, it plays more like a parody of such style. There is absolutely no need for there to be so much neon in this film. It doesn’t seem to fit the gritty and harsh material, and is overused. I mean, even pool interiors and the sky itself seem to have a neon-tinge to them.

The other big issue I have with the film is another relationship issue, that is, between Costner and Quinn. At no point in the film did I believe that these characters could or would be friends of any kind whatsoever. Costner saved Quinn’s life, sure, but what would a military man and a gangster have in common? (Aside from an eventual love for the same woman) Quinn is so obviously corrupt, and so wildly different in every way from Costner’s character that no amount of forced smiling and camaraderie can convince me that these two would be friends. So how can I possibly enjoy a film when none of the relationships convince?

The film is also horribly racist and misogynistic (feminists probably consider this film pure evil), and features way too much cruelty towards animals. We get it, these guys are all “Scarface” wannabes, you’re very clever Mr. Scott, but that doesn’t make it remotely entertaining. It just helps make the film foul and unpleasant. It’s a really nasty film, and that’s before we get to the vigilante/revenge side of the film. Once we get to the revenge part of the film (i.e. Once James Gammon and the like turn up) the film becomes livelier, no doubt about it. Sally Kirkland, for instance, is lively in a cameo, but I’m convinced she’s spent the last 23 years repeating her performance and mutton-dressed-as-slutty-lamb look from this film. Like Scott’s later “Man on Fire”, it also becomes genuinely unpleasant and just not my kind of film (And this is a film that was already unpleasant and not my kind of film to begin with!). I tend to like my revenge films lean and either campy, tongue-in-cheek, or in some other way light of tone. ‘Realistic’ and/or nasty vigilante films are much more problematic for me, for reasons contained in many a previous rant against vigilante flicks. It finally moves at a decent clip in this part of the film, but is still completely objectionable. In fact, the climax is too rushed, but believe me, pacing is the least of the problems I have with the conclusion of this film. I find the violent vigilante stuff objectionable, the lead-up to the vigilante stuff was objectionable too, but after all that we get an absolute pussy of an ending. It is unsatisfying on any level, and overall the film is, to be perfectly blunt, a piece of shit.

The music score by Jack Nietzsche (“Blue Collar”, “Stand By Me”) deserves a dishonourable mention of its own because for all money, I spent the whole film thinking it was Giorgio Moroder (“Midnight Express”, “Flashdance”, and yes, “Top Gun”).

Overblown, undernourished, foul, nasty, reprehensible, and unevenly acted. I guess if you liked “Man on Fire”, you’ll like this, but I thought that was a vile and pretentious film offering me nothing worthwhile. This film is even worse than that.

Rating: F