Revenge

This far-from-perfect rendering of Jim Harrison's shimmering novella has a romantic sweep and elemental power that ultimately transcend its flaws.

Revenge plays like a showdown between its style and its story. It combines the slick, high-tension filmmaking fashion of today with the values and sexual stereotyping of yesterday. It's such a good job of salesmanship that you have to stop and remind yourself you don't want any.

It's corny, cussed and carnal.

It's not just the saturated ultra-violence which make this film difficult to watch - there is something just not convincing about this vehicle for Costner's darker side. One thing is for sure though, driving a Jeep will never be the same again.

A flaccid movie version of Jim Harrison's slightly less flaccid 1979 novella...The movie is soft and aimless. Revenge is the kind of film in which subsidiary characters and events are more interesting than anything the movie is supposed to be about. Even the brutality has no shock effect.

The trouble with Scott’s movies is that they’re not just star vehicles. They’re about the aesthetics of celebrity, about the narcissism that’s going on offscreen. If Revenge ends up knocking Costner down a peg, it’ll be just what he needs — and deserves.

Revenge isn't sweet. It's crude, ugly, pretentious, repulsive, obnoxious and just about unwatchable.