Vendetta

The story was formulaic and we have seen it all before. But Dean Cain and Big Show give outstanding performances both. The violence is graphic and at one point Dean was showing that he had the chops to play Batman in another life!

This film does not shy away from the blood and violence. There is very little bad language in it though, if any.

One has to suspend belief a lot though. How Big Show's character can do what he does and how the number of murders goes unnoticed, got stupid. When people are being killed who are not even inmates, the rest of the police should have been investigating. Why a cop was put in general population is another mystery.

My score of 7 is probably higher than the story deserves, but Dean Cain's performance earns it an extra two points and made this a very enjoyable watch.

"This is my house, the only thing that badge will get you in here is a slit throat." Mason (Cain) is a cop at the top of his game. After finally tracking down and arresting Victor Abbott (Wight) he moves on to the next criminal. When there turns out to not be enough evidence to hold him Victor is released and wants revenge. The next time Mason finds him Victor is standing over his dead wife. Now it is Mason's turn for revenge and after deliberately getting arrested he has Victor right where he wants him. This is a movie that is pretty much exactly what you would expect. The movie is really a B-rate action movie that plays off every cliché in the book. All that said the movie is pretty entertaining and is watchable. There are not really any twists or anything that isn't unexpected but again, when you go to watch a movie like this you pretty much know what your are getting into. Overall, nothing terrible but if you've seen one of these movies you have seen them all. I give this a C+.

"Vendetta" never feels real. It opens with a car "chase" that looks more like a product placement. The police procedures don't seem authentic. The detective's home looks like something he could never afford and the back yard doesn't seem to belong to the rest of the property. A criminal who supposedly is involved in all manner of nefarious activities is set free when one key witness disappears. The prison looks like an abandoned prison with brand new weights in the exercise yard. There is a bright new humidor that sometimes holds cigars and sometimes holds something else. Even the fight scenes, which are usually strong points in WWE films, aren't convincing.

It has a few bright spots, including interesting performances by Michael Eklund as the warden and Matthew MacCaull as a guard. The cinematography is pretty good with decent lighting and steady shots that look like the camera had actually been locked down on a tripod or other support mechanism. There are a couple of nicely executed time-lapse shots. Make-up effects were convincing.

Dean Cain has 139 credits on IMDb, but I've only seen a few of his films. He held his own in dramatic scenes playing opposite Denzel Washington in "Out of Time." But he was in much better shape then and had a convincing role. With a more capable director at the helm, a better screenplay and better action choreography, I might believe that the 2003 Cain could hold his own in a fight against Paul Wight.

We've seen movies about characters who break into prison one way or another to confront an adversary, including "A Law Abiding Citizen," "Face/Off" and "Escape Plan." For such plots to work, the protagonist must have some expectation of eventually escaping or using his incarceration as an alibi. Here, the plot makes the protagonist unsympathetic and fatalistic.

The biggest problem with this film lies in the motivation of the characters. For the story to work, there needs to be a lot of history between the detective and the villain. The villain needs a strong motive to target the detective's family and the attack needs to be particularly loathsome. The plot also needs to make sense. Danvers is a detective. Abbott is locked up with murderers and other violent criminals. Danvers could more easily destroy evidence or persuade a key witness to recant testimony to induce one of the inmates to murder Abbott. Danvers doesn't seem driven by extraordinary circumstances.

None of the motivations, big or small, make much sense. When Danvers learns there is an intruder in his home, he races there and calls his partner instead of sending uniformed officers. Joel pulls a dramatic U-turn and races to the prison to attend to something that could wait until morning. Police need a warrant to arrest somebody, unless they actually witness them commit a crime. Nobody can simply tell a SWAT team to arrest somebody for some crime committed months or years previously.

It's difficult to make revenge plots sympathetic. The protagonist has to have a strong sense of commitment to justice and feel justice has been thwarted, but the movie fails to do this. The protagonist is unsympathetic and uncommunicative. His plan isn't clever. He takes a blunt force approach, but doesn't have unique skills. Along the way, he engages in confrontations with others who had nothing to do with his original motive. We don't see character development. The movie lacks any sort of moral.

Very little seemed convincing. Nothing seemed original, exciting, suspenseful or cathartic.

A low budget action b-movie extravaganza, nothing more and nothing less and it doesn't pretend like it's something more either so it works if you're in the right mind-frame and don't expect more than that.

All I wanted to see was Dean Cain as the good guy going vigilante-style and kicking some bad guys asses, and that's exactly what I got.

Could it have done without one or two twists? Yeah, could it have been a little tighter edited? Yeah, that too but overall a fairly entertaining movie.

I'm not a wrestling fan so I have no idea who 'The Big Show' is but he was better than you're average wrestler turned actor, at least in the role he was playing which was just a big bully bad-ass with a bad attitude.

I don't think he'll ever become as versatile as say 'The Rock' but hey, as far as this movie goes he did what was asked for, being the menacing bad guy.

It sort of has the feel of an Asylum-movie at some times (the movie company not the institution) but if it was an Asylum-movie it would be one of the better ones at least.

Yeah nothing amazing on any level but it served it's purpose.

Any steel-thewed cop vs. Elephantine goon actioner including the trusty workhorse line: 'You should have killed me when you had the chance!' has the potential to be an enjoyably thick-eared DTV time-waster, and happily we soon thug-deep in Seagal/JCVD wronged cop turning super wrong-headed jailbird with brooding Det. Danvers (Dean Cain) ferociously going head to pectorals with towering, roid-raging rapscallion Victor Abott (Paul 'The Big Show' Wight') in the Soska Sisters pleasingly old-school head-knocker 'Vendetta', with its myriad knuckle-dragging, jaw-busting fights culminating orgiastically in one bodaciously bloody, free-for-all prison yard riot! The stone-faced anti-hero Cain is wickedly vengeful as the single-minded, spike-fisted, increasingly sociopathic skell slayer and his towering, Tor Johnson-sized, permanently perspiring nemesis power-grunts his expletive monosyllables with a useful Baritone belligerence. 'Vendetta' is so deliciously 90s the glaring omission of a Hed PE track over one of the gore-slathered Laundry room is an almost unforgivable faux pas! The far from static film has a comfortably familiar aspect and the adrenalized fisticuffs, while not always perfectly executed are reliably plentiful, frequently grisly and should keep any shank-happy fight-freaks distracted until the next Scott Adkins beat-down epic comes out. I went into this with ZERO expectations and happily exited entertained and sometimes that's all I really want from a bruisingly bellicose, gang-banging, plasma-drenched B-movie.