Revenge (1990)

Directed by Tony Scott. Starring Kevin Costner, Anthony Quinn, Madeleine Stowe, James Gammon, Miguel Ferrer, Joaquín Martínez, Tomas Milian, Sally Kirkland, Jesse Corti, John Leguizamo, Karmin Murcelo. [R]

Newly-retired US Naval pilot Costner travels to Mexico to visit wealthy friend Quinn, a crime boss with a young and beautiful wife (Stowe) who is attracted to the visitor, and vice versa. It’s not long before the two are sneaking away for quickies, which Quinn eventually discovers, leading to the brooding, fixation and violence that’s been promised by the generic title. As expected for Scott’s early output, it’s a stylish, dramatically-lit, and crisply photographed film, so the film is a pleasure to simply look at, even when the material being shown is mean and bloody. But it’s a dramatically dormant slog, centered on the sort of conflict that’s been covered so many times before that there needs to be a good twist, kick, or fresh attitude for the story to be told yet again (and it has none of those things). Long, unpleasant, and not especially well-acted; it gets off on the wrong foot by establishing a friendship between the two main characters that can scarcely even be believed, and by making Stowe’s sultry character out to be a trophy/pawn instead of a fully-formed individual. Based on the “values” demonstrated by the lead males, the late Sam Peckinpah might have had a shot at doing something interesting with it, but Scott is too slick for Jim Harrison’s turgid pulp (he co-scripted and wrote the novella upon which the screenplay was based). The director’s cut runs about twenty minutes shorter, so that version may be more tolerable.

39/100