Sweet Revenge

Oh, a film that had so much promise.

It had Nancy Allen from Robocop, and Gina Gershon from Bound, and it was about sex slavery.

Unfortunately, it was the second film directed by Mark Sobel, and his inexperience showed. He should have stuck with TV episodes. The writer who penned the screenplay was a newbie too, as he only wrote one other screenplay. Maybe he shot himself after writing this.

For a film about sex slavery, the only nudity is shots of Gina Gershon and Lotis Key going skinny dipping after they escape, and before they agree to go back to get Nancy Allen's daughter.

Ted Shackelford ("Knots Landing") provides the beefcake, and Allen does end up in bed with him.

Oh, it does have a lot of gunfire and numerous Filipinos die, but there was more action going on at my neighbors as it was the 4th of July.

This movie fails on so many levels it's hard to catalog them all, but I'll try. Acting. Directing. Script. Plot. Voice dubs. Miscellaneous goofs and errors. With the "plot" of sex slavery, there was a chance for the typical sexplotation in these sorts of movies. None of that (though there is a brief scene with Gina Gershon and one of the other "actresses" doing some skinny-dipping, hardly worth the effort.)

The "movie" is a muddled attempt at...something. It tries to be a "kidnapped girls get revenge" movie, of which there are plenty, but "Sweet Revenge" does not offer any of the "best" of this genre.

If you have 90 minutes to spare, organize your silverware drawer or watch infomercials...don't watch this "movie."

"Sweet Revenge" is a low-grade action movie lacking in style and tension, and yet what sets it somewhat apart from others of its kind (and earns it an extra half-star for a total rating of ** out of 4) is the still quite unusual for its era fact that the three female leads (plus one villainess) have very pro-active roles, the kind of roles that usually men have in the genre; in fact, there is a "Charlie's Angels" vibe to the movie, not so much in the plotting (these are amateurs, not professionals in crime-fighting) but in the sense of female empowerment and sisterhood (the male leads are nondescript). Gina Gershon, in particular, in one of her earliest roles, already has that raw, untamed quality that made her a star later.

My review was written in September 1987 after a screening in Washington Heights.

"Sweet Revenge" is an utterly routine action picture from the Roger Corman stable, reminscent of the Filipino-lensed films he cranked out for the old New World in the early 1970s.

Nancy Allen (pre-"Robocop") toplines as an L. A. reporter doing an undercover stgory on a white slavery ring, who is abducted by the ring's henchpersons Lotis Key and Sal Landi and taken with three young would-be models to the Far East lair of Cicero (Martin Landau, playing the sort of smu baddie used to foil weekly on "Mission: Impossible").

In the midst of numerous escapes and chases they are befriended by Boone (Ted Shackelford), a soldier of fortune involved in smuggling counterfeit Chanel No. 5 to the U. S. Pic sags considerably midway through as the leads take time out to help a pirate friend of Boone's.

Direction by Mark Sobel is by-the-numbers, with numerous explosions proving to be the action highlight. A hurried climax kills off each villain one-by-one, leading to a soggy, sentimental coda of Allen reunited with her missing daughter at the airport back home. Acting is okay, with tv star Shackelford physically right as the reluctant hero.

I have to say that although this film isn't quite good, casting Nancy Allen, was a brilliant idea. She did as much as she could with a poor direction. In this occasion Nancy plays a mother who has to rescue her daughter, and she does another heroine character very well. I think her best heroine character is Anne Lewis in RoboCop movies, but this one is great too!! In the other hand, this movie has action, adventures, a bit of music, as I said before an excellent performance by Nancy. and I have to mention that two great actors as Martin Landau and Gina work in this film too!! So definitive I recommend it to you, it's suitable to watch with friends, and I give it a 10/10.