Revenge Movie Review

Revenge refers to two people's actions in Tony Scott's rough-hewn underseen 1990 drama. It starts with a Navy fighter pilot (Scott had just made Top Gun) named Jay (Kevin Costner), who retires from the Navy and opts to visit an old client named Mendez (a fierce Anthony Quinn) in Mexico. It isn't long before he's sweatily banging Mendez's impossibly gorgeous wife (Madeleine Stowe). They escape for a weekend getaway, but it isn't long before Mendez, an obvious mafioso of some kind, tracks them down and has his thugs go to town on the duo. Amazingly, they both survive, and revenge #2 kicks in.

Don't expect a lot of twists and turns along the way: Often pegged as a thriller, Revenge is in actuality a straightforward story of obsession and, um, revenge. Boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy finds girl again, with plenty of blood spilled along the way.

Costner is just fine here, playing an angsty role with reserve and outright anger when appropriate. Stowe has too little screen time, alas, but owns the movie when she's on, always in full vamp mode. But the show-stealer is of course the legendary Quinn, grizzly and gnarled, and someone you'd be a fool to attempt to cross. Naturally Jay can't help himself, though.

In a story like this, no one is innocent, but we still root for Jay to get his lady back. It's a testament to the script that it can make us care so much about a guy who begins the film an adulterer and ends it a murderer. He even punches a lady in the face.

Revenge is ultimately a pretty simple tale (and the new director's cut DVD actually trims nearly a half hour from the original theatrical version), but it's gritty, tense, and easily worth watching.

The new disc includes a commentary track from Scott and a making-of featurette.