NIKKI says:Yet another revenge-fantasy film -- it's almost an epidemic. We've had the Death Wish films and spin-offs, last year we had The Brave One and the Sean Bean Outlaw movie, and now this. What is it about taking the law into our own hands that thrills us just so much?
This one really wasn't up to par for me. I think in a genre so overdone, much within it quickly become cliched, as it sure did here. Unless there's a twist, which this one attempts then quickly drops.
Gillian Anderson and Danny Dyer are attacked (he's near-blinded, she's raped), and when they learn one of the perpetrators lives near Anderson's dead father's shack, they plot their revenge. This far in and Anderson is a changed woman, once carefree and a bit tarty, she's now glare-eyed and intense, not wanting to report her rape, but unable to let the horrors of it go. Her solution, of course, is to torture her attacker as she was tortured. She gets herself a war rifle, and waits to take her best shot.
But it's never that easy, is it? That twist and a few turns later, and Anderson and Dyer are carrying out their torture as plotted. So why the twist at all? For a second, Anderson's character had the chance to really do something interesting, but she didn't, and we were left wanting. These were two main characters delivered to us with a variety of flaws, yet none of these wound up impacting the characters or their decisions at all. The opening could have featured any two people. Why were these guys set up the way they were, which was odd to say the least, especially when the film wants us to root for them? They weren't bad people, they just weren't your stock standard couple-that-gets-attacked. Ultimately, whoever they were pre-attack just didn't matter.
Not a great film, but not awful, and there were some genuinely tense moments. I'm really starting to enjoy this Danny Dyer guy, too.
2.5/5
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