Vendetta

I was watching this movie and noticed a massive plot hole that made the entire movie bloody IMPOSSIBLE in less than 20 minutes! The bad guys are arrested at the beginning of the movie in the act of trying to kill police officers IN CHICAGO! Then, 30 days later, they're released from prison because "a witness disappeared, and they couldn't prove their case against them any longer." THEY TRIED TO KILL COPS AND WERE CAUGHT IN THE ACT! IN CHICAGO! There is NO DAMN WAY that they would have been released from prison! THEY STILL HAD ATTEMPTED MURDER OF POLICE OFFICERS TO CHARGE THEM WITH! IN BLOODY CHICAGO! Stay away, it's absolute garbage.

Minimal plot and not a hard to follow story line. Tons of perfectly executed action scenes that felt intense and explosive. If you love action and fight scenes then this movie is for you.

Mason "Mace" Danvers (Cain) is a Chicago cop with everything to live for. His wife is expecting their first child, he's excelling in his career, and he's pretty much living the dream. Suddenly, his once-perfect life becomes a nightmare when the super-evil baddie Victor Abbott ('Show) invades his home and brutally slaughters his pregnant wife. Vowing revenge, Mace gets himself locked up in Stonewall prison so he can get close to Victor and his crew. But he gets more than he bargains for when he uncovers a conspiracy that goes all the way to the top. With Mace on the edge, will he get his VENDETTA? It's going to be a "big bad show tonight" as The Big Show faces off against Dean Cain in the battle we've all waited ages to see. Vendetta is the best WWE Films production we've seen to date, and has a lot of good points, mixed in with a couple negatives. The good: the movie is Dean Cain at his absolute best, and it's pretty gritty for him. Cain is out of control as he kills baddie after baddie and has some cool weaponry like spiked brass knuckles to help him along on his journey of revenge. You can see all the fights, and the movie certainly doesn't skimp on the blood, brutality, and violence. It's well-made overall and isn't overly long. It knows its place as a B-movie and anyone expecting anything else might be missing the point. The Big Show (we could call him Mr. Show, but that might be infringing upon the rights of Bob and David) is essentially a wrestling-style baddie, but perhaps even more evil. He's so maniacally evil, we at one point shouted, "we get it! He's EVIL!" - but that's the thing about these wrestlers being in WWE productions. Even though, as wrestlers, they haven't been in any movies, they have years of experience acting, because that's 99% of what wrestling is. The WWE is now essentially a farm team so they can figure out who goes into their cinematic output. Perhaps The Big Show and others just wanted to act all along; their dream was to be in off-Broadway plays and the legitimate theatre but just did wrestling as a backup plan. We certainly could see Mr. Big Show bellowing "Stella!!!! Stella!!!" in a star turn as Stanley Kowalski in 'Streetcar. The not-so-good: The movie is probably one of the least original and most clichéd we've seen in some time. There is literally nothing that in any way separates it from similar movies like Death Warrant (1990) or In Hell (2003). Whether that's a dealbreaker is another matter, but almost every prison movie cliché is present and accounted for, much like the lineup when prisoners first arrive at the jail. It's also quite repetitive, which is a seemingly unavoidable trap for prison movies. The whole second half is essentially 1. either Cain or Big Show talks to the warden in his office 2. fight scene 3. Big Show talking to his crew. That's pretty much it. This could have been avoided if Cain's character went into prison later in the movie than he does. If you don't have a problem with clichés and repetition, Vendetta is good, solid fare and has plenty of fine attributes to offset these things.

The Soska Sisters (Jen & Sylvia) made a splash in the horror film scene with "American Mary" (2012), but more recently their careers seem to have taken a down-turn; this is the second consecutive WWE film project (after "See No Evil 2") that they helm. They do inject a lot of blood (literally) into it, but the story is banal, and by the time of the climactic prison riot, it is clear that the whole thing has gotten out of their hands (it's also distressing to see a film directed by two women that's so male-centered, and the only woman in the cast has three lines and then gets gruesomely killed). Dean Cain looks tired and overweight, while the imposing Big Show has trimmed down and is better than expected. Michael Eklund apes (I think) Gary Oldman in "Leon" - he deserves a Razzie award. * out of 4.

"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.