My Descent Into Madness: Revenge (1990)

  Revenge has left me so conflicted.  On the one hand, it's a by-the-numbers film for 95% of its runtime.  A hot shot fighter pilot (Kevin Costner) leaves the Air Force to go hang out with his old friend, who also happens to be a Spanish crime lord (Anthony Quinn) in Mexico.  Quinn has recently acquired a young trophy wife (Madeline Stowe), who immediately catches Costner's eye.  Soon Costner and Stowe run away together to live out their life in a rustic cabin.  Quinn, naturally displeased by this, shows up with his enforcers and does all manner of terrible things to them.  Costner is left for dead, and Stowe is disfigured and forced into employment at a brothel.  Costner recovers, swears revenge, and goes looking to save Stowe.
  It's not an unfamiliar story arc in American cinema.  So right out of the gate, the movie doesn't have originality going for it.  While she may be a beautiful and talented actress, but Stowe is hugely miscast here.  Her Spanish accent is atrocious (think Nicole Kidman in Far & Away or Julia Roberts in Mary Reilly, it's that level of bad).  Just thinking back to it is making me angry.  Costner, as always, plays the role as Kevin Costner, but this time with a small scar above his eye.  Tony Scott's direction is pretty straightforward, like he didn't care enough to give anything any style.

"My accent is so bad it is causing this movie's aspect ratio to warp."

  Fortunately the movie is populated by a lot of dependable character actors in minor roles, which keeps things from becoming too much of a bore.  The recently-deceased and always-entertaining James Gammon shows up to help Costner get back on his feet.  Then cool-as-ice Miguel Ferrer and an impossibly young and nearly silent John Leguizamo help Costner form and execute his revenge plot.  And Sally Kirkland also shows up, to show off some cleavage and enable 2 very small plot points, which would normally seem extraneous if Kirkland wasn't so good in her small role.  And then there's the great Anthony Quinn, bringing warmth and dignity to a character that most would have played as stone cold evil.  Quinn's crime lord may be slightly misogynistic, but he genuinely loves his wife.  And while he abuses his pets and verbally abuses his underlings, he also has real affection for longtime friend Costner.  He is the most interesting role in the film, and he's barely on screen after the movie's first act.  And it is his role that sets up my quandry with the movie.

FYI, there will be MAJOR SPOILERS now, since I need to discuss the ending.  Not that I actually imagine any of you will be inspired to go watch Revenge after this anyway, but I feel like playing fair.

  I said the film was 95% uninspired.  That's because the final 5% is amazing.  For its entire length, the film has a very clear plot course.  And then the big confrontation comes between Costner and Quinn, and it plays out in the last way expected.  Costner is pointing a shotgun at Quinn, and Quinn knows that he is going to die.  He has a look of acceptance, but makes a single request: that Costner apologize to him for stealing his wife.  Quinn loved Stowe, and he loved Costner as a friend.  While he was bad man to others, he treated both of them with caring and compassion, until they both unprovokingly betrayed him.  Quinn may have grossly overreacted, but it was Costner and Stowe who were guilty of the first transgression.  And now, for the first time in the film, Costner makes that realization.  He lowers his gun, apologizes, and lets Quinn go.  Quinn tells Costner where he can find Stowe, and he arrives just in time to hold Stowe as she dies from the repeated physical and chemical abuse she suffered in the brothel.  Holy.  Shit.




  The Costner/Quinn scene is played mostly through looks, with very little dialogue.  Costner catches a lot of flak as an actor (including from me, in this very review), but here he is incredible as you watch him make the realization that he is the guilty one, and he is so taken aback by it that he can barely stammer out his apology.  Quinn, always a master, wears the look of a father who has been stabbed by his own son.  Though the film is ostensibly about Costner and Stowe's love, the Coster/Quinn relationship is the one that actually has some heart to it.  Their final scene together seems more tragic than Stowe's subsequent death, partly because Stowe is truly awful in this role, but mostly because their close friendship was so well established in the early going, and we now fully realize how much these friends have hurt one another.  It may not be worth sitting through the previous 100 mediocre minutes, but that scene by itself is heartbreaking.

Trivia:

• Costner wanted this to be his directing debut, but a producer talked him out of it.
• Sydney Pollack, Johnathan Demme and Walter Hill were all attached to direct this at one point.  The movie was nearly made by John Huston in 1987 (and would have ended up being his final directing credit), but Huston did not want Costner in the role, so he left the project (apparently Costner was somehow contractually attached, because I can't otherwise imagine John Huston not getting his way).
• During production, John Leguizamo vomited on Tony Scott at a party.