Vendetta (2015)

Touches You

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

The Soska Sisters (Jen & Sylvia) made a splash in the horror film scene with "American Mary" (2012), but more recently their careers seem to have taken a down-turn; this is the second consecutive WWE film project (after "See No Evil 2") that they helm. They do inject a lot of blood (literally) into it, but the story is banal, and by the time of the climactic prison riot, it is clear that the whole thing has gotten out of their hands (it's also distressing to see a film directed by two women that's so male-centered, and the only woman in the cast has three lines and then gets gruesomely killed). Dean Cain looks tired and overweight, while the imposing Big Show has trimmed down and is better than expected. Michael Eklund apes (I think) Gary Oldman in "Leon" - he deserves a Razzie award. * out of 4.

This movie felt more like a 90's direct-to-video action movie than most actual 90's direct-to-video action movies. And that isn't necessarily a bad thing.Getting it out of the way -- this movie is dopey. Very, very dopey. But who cares? The action is solid, the score and music is good, the villain is creepy and intense, and Dean Cain delivers a solid performance as the hero turned anti-hero. Felt like a spiritual sequel to 'Death Warrant' with Van Damme set in modern day.The duo of directors seem to primarily work in the horror genre, and it shows. They seemed to shoehorn in a lot of blatant gore that, in many places, felt very unnecessary and out of place for the genre. It didn't hurt the film, but just didn't feel 100% right for the tone. Other than that, the film was well directed and looked much "bigger" than the small budget I assume they had.Overall, 'Vendetta' is a well-done, fun little action flick. Check it out.

Wilhelm Scream. You know the one. It's been in movies since the days of black and white westerns. It's the same scream ol' Captain Wilhelm belted out when his leg was impaled by an Apache arrow. Sadly you have to wait almost 2 hours to hear it, but when you do you'll stop everything else to watch as a guy does a horizontal 720 from a barely landed weak hand punch. Pathetic.Seriously, worst scene in the movie; when a "hardened", veteran cop continues to fire his gun after the slide has locked in place, then looks at it like "oh, that's why it won't shoot.". Terrible. Just terrible.

I've not seen any of the WWE Studios films, so I don't know how much of an impact WWE has have on the film and creative license, but, I'm sure there is some. The casting and acting was great. Dean Cain was really believable. Michael Eklund as Warden Snyder really irritated the hell out of me but that's how the warden was supposed to be portrayed, so job well done.Some of the dialogue was a little too proper but the fighting scenes were well choreographed. The soundtrack was almost non-stop and silence would have helped built up tension and or shock in some of the scenes.It wasn't a perfect flick which, IMO, would have been too boring and forgettable, maybe even cliché, but, gave it a modern day "grind house" feel to the picture. I would really like to see The Soska Twins do a b/w film noir piece.