It’s only the 20th of February, and I have already seen the worst film of the year. It is called Revenge, and that is precisely what the moviegoing public should wreck upon its director, Tony Scott; its star, Kevin Costner; writers Jim Harrison and Jeffrey Fiskin; executive producer Kevin Costner; (the same one) and the entire management board of Columbia Pictures. Every one of them should be clapped in manacles and marched down Hollywood Boulevard to a public strangling, to be carried out by outraged moviegoers wielding celluloid nooses made from copies of this wretched film. These are desperate measures, I know, but we live in desperate times.
Revenge is dull, gratuitously violent, moronically written, woodenly acted, and directed like a bad condom commercial. To save you the trouble of seeing it, here is a short summary of the proceedings, transcribed from my notes over a big glass of Metaxa:
Closeups of retiring Navy pilot Kevin (Tom Cruse grown up) are inserted into footage left over from Top Gun. Retirement party. Manly tears and manly emotion. Is everybody in the navy an idiot, or is it the script? Kevin's off to Mexico to visit his pal the Mafioso.
Mexico. He meets a beautiful woman on the road. Could it be... why, yes, it's Mr. Mafioso's wife. (Right.) Kevin meets the feller, and hey, it's Tony Quinn playing a guacamole Don Corleone. Audience orientation dialogue. Boy, his wife's cute. Tony’s not, though; he throws his dog into the pool.
Tony and the Mrs. are not happy. She wants kids, he doesn't. "We've talked about this a hundred times," he says, which explains how they just happen to be talking about it when the camera's there.
A dinner. Dull conversation. Boy, Mexican politicians are sure corrupt. Dumb, too. So are their wives. What is this all in aid of? Tony blows out some brains while Kevin and the Mrs. stare into each other's eyes in the library. Why are half the closeups out of focus?
They meet at the beach next day. His dog does tricks. He tries to make her lemonade. They fondle the limes. Is this going to be the dumbest seduction scene in cinematic history? Nope. A Party. Kevin is leaving. The Mrs. meets him in the coatroom. Here they go! Just like Sonny Corleone in The Godfather!
They're in love. They arrange to meet, but the Don eavesdrops. Trouble's a-brewin'. They drive to Kevin's cabin. Heavy music. (This is how Tony Scott conveys passion.) At the cabin, they roll around and exchange banalities. Whoops! The Don and his thugs bust in and Kick Ass. She's sold to a bordello, he's left in a ditch to die. He's found by a noble peasant and nursed back to health while the Mrs. undergoes the foulest degradation possible, with only Kevin's navy dog-tag to give her strength.
Healthy and handsome again, Kevin sets out to find the Mrs. and kick some ass himself. In a country of 80 million, he by coincidence runs into—and kills—the two thugs who beat him up. He finds the Don, confronts him, and what, he lets him live? Damn, he does!
He finds the Mrs. in a convent. She's in a coma, but she wakes up for him. "I love you," she says. She dies, and his dog-tag falls to the floor. Kevin is sad. He sniffles. Process shot of the convent and a mountain in the background.
The End. Credits. "Hands up", I yelled out as the theatre lights came up, "all those of you who came to see a Kevin Costner movie and were savagely disappointed." And as if they had all been one person, the audience drew down its trousers and mooned the screen.
--Published in Between the Lines, 1990
