#16 in my ranking of Tony Scott’s filmography.
This film seems to have some mild positivity amongst Tony Scott fans, the idea that it may not be one of his best films but that it is one of his underappreciated ones. I simply cannot agree. It’s kind of terrible, a mixture of narrative, styles, and concerns that clash horribly all while having no real grasp of how to tell a character-based story of vengeance. I was alternatively bored and frustrated from beginning to end, finding nothing to cling to as a viewer beyond some mild application of Tony Scott’s visual style which was butting up against Kevin Costner’s insipidly dull approach to storytelling.
Based on a novella by Jim Harrison, it tells the story of how a naval aviator, Jay (Costner), retires from the military and decides that his first stop is going to be the local Mexican kingpin, Tibey (Anthony Quinn). I’ve tried to look, but I’m not sure if the novella has a reason why Jay and Tibey are friends at all. The age gap between them is so large and their backgrounds so unexplained in the film that I just could not shake the question about why they knew each other at all, much less why they seemed to have this deep friendship. I reached a certain point where I was saying to myself, “Assume you missed a line of dialogue and it makes sense,” and yet I still couldn’t make it make sense. It was too implied while the action on display was too shallow.
The action involves them playing tennis and talking about guns and hunting trips. This is stuff that obviously has connections to Harrison’s source novella, but there’s this lackadaisical pacing that combines poorly with the opaqueness of the background that just makes everything feel…dull. This seems to be the big Costner influence. He had reportedly wanted Revenge to be his directorial debut, but he was talked out of it and left with a producer credit. I seriously, seriously doubt that he didn’t exert himself creatively over his director, Scott, which ends up making the final product feel like a weird space in between Scott’s visual hyperactivity and Costner’s placidly paced looks at men in the West.
The affair itself might be the best part of the film. It’s not great, or anything, and I could think of ways to make it more impactful. However, it is the tale of two lonely people finding each other, and it’s decent. It just takes…kind of forever to manifest, all the while we’re getting this thin look at the relationship between Jay and Tibey as well as Mexican politics (Tibey owns the local political machine which comes to exactly nothing in the end except to show that he’s ruthless when wronged in one scene). It’s a purely functional romance mostly hindered by the fact that everything around it is trying to undermine it by taking up time. The Mexican politics that don’t matter. The bromance that never feels real (which completely undoes the sense of betrayal).
Well, the titular revenge does get taken because of obvious movements in the plot, and the second half of the film is all about Jay trying to get back to Miryea who is forced into hiding. It’s here where things just feel…off structurally. We get introduced to Texas (James Gammon) who takes Jay under his wing for a few scenes before dying due to injuries from an off screen fight. It takes something like fifteen minutes and has virtually no impact on the plot (there’s something about Jay driving Texas’ trailer that makes him identifiable, which is a very thin reed). And then there’s the introduction of Amador (Miguel Ferrera) and his cousin Ignacio (John Leguizamo) who are there to help Jay in his final steps.
This trio of characters really does feel like the kind of flavoring you throw into a written work, especially something shorter like a novella, but having them pop up so late and be so prominent for so long to such limited effect is…odd in a movie. Especially a movie that’s supposed to be a thriller building up towards a climax.
And that climax feels like a wet squib because it entirely relies on this feeling of betrayal between best buddies whose relationship never felt more than thin and never made sense anyway. Really, I don’t think this film works at all. The romance, to some limited degree, but nothing else.
I was beginning to be on the Tony Scott train as he grew in prominence through the 80s, but Revenge is a healthy step backwards. I lay a good amount of blame at the feet of Costner, a man who, when he’s a filmmaker instead of just an actor, I have little affinity for, finding him plodding and dull more than anything else. It’s obvious that this was his passion project and that he took as much control as he could during production. Scott apparently was very fond of the film, so I assume that he liked the working relationship with Costner. I don’t think it led to a good final product, though.
Plodding is not a word one should associate with a thriller. At least it looks pretty good.
Originally published here
English (US) · 