The Direct to Video Connoisseur

I'm a huge fan of action, horror, sci-fi, and comedy, especially of the Direct to Video variety. In this blog I review some of my favorites and not so favorites, and encourage people to comment and add to the discussion. For announcements and updates, don't forget to Follow us on Twitter and Like our Facebook page. If you're the director, producer, distributor, etc. of a low-budget feature length film and you'd like to send me a copy to review, you can contact me at dtvconnoisseur[at]yahoo.com. I'd love to check out what you got. And check out my book, Chad in Accounting, over on Amazon.

Saturday, December 17, 2022

Vendetta (2022)

Back in October I had failed to secure a guest for an upcoming podcast, so I decided to fire up a few Bruce Willis DTV flicks on streaming sites and discuss them on a solo episode. Of the myriad options available to me, this one piqued my interest because it has one of my favorite actors, Theo Rossi, plus the idea of Thomas Jane and Mike Tyson in addition to Rossi and Willis had to be good too. But then there was that grimacing bearded white guy on the cover. That couldn't mean anything bad, could it?

Vendetta is about said bearded, grimacing white guy (Clive Standen), former special forces (aren't they always) with a beautiful wife and daughter (aren't they always) whose world comes crashing down when a gang member kills said daughter. Standen gets revenge on him in classic grimacing bearded white guy style, which draws the ire of the gang member's brother, Theo Rossi, and dad, Bruce Willis. So then they kill the wife, but don't bother finishing off Standen, who then recovers, and seeks revenge, with help from a pipe-smoking Thomas Jane. Will his revenge be worth it? And how much of a role will Mike Tyson have?

 
This thing was just a mess from the word go, which means I don't know where to start. The story was long for 96 minutes, which is saying a lot, because 96 minutes usually feels compact. Theo Rossi was great, which introduced a heavy Destro Effect, because Standen's hero was so one-note and uncompelling we just had to gravitate toward Rossi. Even in Rossi's death at the end, he's almost laughing at the movie, like "my death serves to show how pedestrian and one-note this film is." There's this part at the end where Rossi and his gang are chasing Standen and Jane, and Jane calls Mike Tyson, who runs a chop shop. Tyson's like "yeah, lure them here, we'll take them down," and he gets his gang together to confront Rossi's gang. I thought "okay, it's on then!" But it wasn't, Rossi just went in and shot them all. The Willis of course is scant, but he and Rossi are great as father and son, so much so that I wasn't upset that we only got so much Willis. I think with the cast, if it hadn't been so relentlessly paint-by-numbers, and had a hero who was more fun and engaging, it might have worked; but unfortunately it had none of that.

We last did a Willis film back in January, so almost a year ago, and that one was Precious Cargo, which was also following up a podcast episode. At that time, we didn't know he was squeezing as many of these movies as possible in because he would have to retire due to his aphasia. At that time too I'd decided to take a moratorium on reviewing them, because they were taking on this cynical, assembly line quality, especially the Emmett-Furla-Oasis ones. I think there still is that cynicism in how this one was made, but seeing Willis as a gangster again was fun--more fun than the crime boss he was in Precious Cargo I think. This is now 11 Willis films on the site, but with the podcast episode this was on, plus one I released with Ty from Comeuppance a month later, and one we have coming next month, I now have a lot of Willis in the can. I don't know if I'll get to it all over the next year, or if it's even worth giving all six of those other films reviews. I feel like there are guys out there like Fred Williamson, Cirio H. Santiago, or Robert Ginty who need more love than that, so I guess we'll see--I guess we'll always have them in the can in case I come across a week where I didn't get anything watched.

As I mentioned above, I'm a big fan of Theo Rossi. In particular, I loved him as Hernan "Shades" Alvarez in the Netflix Luke Cage series. He brings an indie actor sensibility to something like this, a feeling of like "what is he doing here?" but I think the opportunity to act opposite Bruce Willis had to be big--plus whatever paycheck for a short shooting schedule--and he really makes the most out of these scenes they had together. The problem is, when you have a baddie of the quality of Rossi, and you pair him with Willis, you need a hero that matches that, and they didn't do that here with the standard one-note grimacing bearded white guy. It felt like someone bought a great tequila, and wasted it in a margarita. The good tequila is for sipping straight, and the good baddies are for the exciting, compelling heroes, like a Dolph or a Scott Adkins.

The bearded, grimacing white guy is pretty standard--or "Standen?"--for these Willis films. If it's not a Clive Standen, then it's Jessie Metcalf, Patrick Muldoon, Chad Michael Murray--or in Fortress: Sniper's Eye, it's Metcalf and Murray. Hell, even Mark-Paul Gosselaar, who started off as an off-beat bearded white guy, couldn't escape the grimacing, brooding aspect all these guys end up being. The question is, who asked for this? Is this what people consider an "Alpha Male," like maybe the Emmett-Furla folks just gathered up a bunch of silly tweets about "Alpha Males" and Frankensteined this thing: white, bearded, trucker hat, flannel shirt, former special forces, drinks beer, has a beautiful wife and maybe a kid and a nice granite kitchen island in a McMansion, and then some Theo Rossi/Bruce Willis baddie comes along and threatens it, so they need to get extra grimace-y and defend their turf. It's so much a parody of itself that it's clownish, especially the preponderance of them in these assembly line Willis films, but here it took the silliness to another level with how one-note and uninspired Standen's character was, which made the Destro Effect with Rossi and Willis that much worse. The thing is, this movie's story sans the grimacing bearded white guy was done perfectly in Recoil with Gary Daniels, so they had the blueprint, and just didn't follow it.


Finally, to end on a good note, Thomas Jane was really good in this, and we're seeing him amass something of his own solid DTV career. This is only his fourth film on the site though, one of which was another Willis flick, Vice. One thing that would be interesting, especially now that Disney+ has been losing money with the original content TV shows, is if their studios came up with a DTV wing for all of their Marvel properties, and maybe these DTV flicks could be like the old one-shot comic books, like a one-off story where maybe a different artist and writer takes an established property on a different adventure. So maybe we get one more look at Thomas Jane as the Punisher, but he has nothing to do with the Jon Bernthal version and his place in the MCU, and maybe they give an Isaac Florentine or a Jesse V. Johnson the chance to direct it. With the work Jane's been doing in these DTV flicks, it would be great to see, and I think it would be a nice antidote to the fatigue people have been experiencing with the expansive interconnectedness of the MCU.

And with that, let's wrap this up. Unlike my inspired idea for a Thomas Jane Punisher DTV flick, this wasn't so much. Cool to see Willis and Rossi act opposite each other, but the story was too all over the place and the hero was too one-note. If you want to check it out though, it's still on Hulu.

For more info: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14849038

And if you haven't yet, check out my new novel, Holtman Arms, at Amazon in paperback or Kindle!

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