Written and directed by Jared Cohn
Starring Bruce Willis, Thomas Jane, Clive Standed
Rated R
Runtime: 1 hour, 36 minutes
Available May 17

by KL Martin, Staff Writer

Vendetta is cringeworthy action flick that accidentally parodies the genre resulting in what can only be described as a remarkable self burn.

In Vendetta, after his daughter is murdered during a random gang initiation, former Marine William “Willy” Duncan (Clive Standen) seeks his own brand of revenge on the killer after purposely tanking his testimony during the perpetrator’s trial in order to hand out his own extrajudicial justice,unknowingly sparking a war with the man's violent brother (Theo Rossi) and father (Bruce Willis). 

The two eventually retaliate by killing his wife and putting William into a coma. A coma that is neither seen nor demonstrated on screen. He apparently awakens a “new man” with nothing left to lose and begins hunting down the remaining members of the gang responsible.

As a filmmaker who has experienced something similar in the industry, clearly the selling point that got this film made was the names that were attached to it. On paper, the potential, if done right, could be extraordinary.

With an experienced director who has helmed such near-Razzie bait as, Halloween Pussy Trap Kill! Kill! (2017) , Deadlock (2021) and  Little Dead Rotting Hood (2016), what could possibly go wrong?

Everything. Everything could go wrong.

This paint by odd numbers, run-of-the-mill revenge, low-testosterone fueled project hits a new low.  As a independent filmmaker, I do my best to try not to take down anybody who has managed to convince someone to invest in their project. That takes a lot of work and tenacity that most don’t have. I give  Jared Cohn a lot of credit for getting to this point, as he has several times over his career. All of that said, that’s where the credit should stop.

There were so many interesting choices in this project that I might’ve face palmed myself into concussion protocol several times. The project itself was wrought with continuity errors and poor SFX/VFX. All of which were compounded by even more atrocious editing. From the moment of the first kill by William Duncan and how the blood managed to cover the front end of the car 10 feet behind him but not touch Willie Duncan I knew that this was going to be a problem. 

The dialogue was full of throwaway lines that felt like it was trying to convince you that this was a revenge drama with street elements and not going into it knowing that it is, if that makes any sense. There were some incredibly bad choices that convinced me that Jared might’ve gotten steamrolled by some of his bigger named actors. Namely, Thomas Jane and his tale of two different accents. In the beginning, when he’s introduced and he speaks to Mike Tyson he sounds one way. However, when he meets Willy Duncan at the hotel suddenly he’s trying real hard to sound street wise. 

If I’m being honest and funny, his usage of the word “mutherfucka” several times in a sentence that didn’t need it made me feel like he was trying to sound like what he thought a street thug would sound like, but on purpose. Clive Standen is guilty of it as well. Both of which were just awful have clearly never spoken to anybody who’s lived adjacent to the street life ,let alone actually a criminal on the street

You also cannot convince me that the pipe that Thomas Jane is smoking throughout was something that Jared initially had in mind. That reeked of an actors choice for the character that I don’t believe any director would’ve approved if he really knew that Jane was going to go with that terrible accent. He sounded like if Popeye spent a lot of time in Camden, New Jersey and that amount of time was really only two days but he felt like he lived there forever so he’s paying “homage”

Theo Rossi played a caricature of every bad guy he’s played in his career culminating in him turning into Heath Ledger’s joker (I guess?) at the end apparently. It was awful and really a step back for what his talent has shown prior to this.

His character’s relationship with his father, played by Bruce Willis, is so incomplete and underbaked. The dialogue felt useless between the two of them. At one point there was a scene in which Bruce’s character told him to leave to go kill Willy Duncan but the next scene was him coming back the next day to sit on the couch and basically rehash the dialogue of them hating each other with no explanation. The dialogue that had been spread out over the course of the entire movie. It was sort of torture to watch and a complete waste of screen time when you have someone the likes of Bruce Willis in your film.

Clive Standen was inconsistent in his attempted portrayal of any action star, potential or otherwise. It felt like he was trying to be Charles Bronson but also ,ironically, Thomas Jane in The Punisher. It was nearly as distinguishably as bad as Thomas Jane portrayal of Frank Castle all those years ago. The difference is Charles Bronson understood the assignment throughout his career whereas Clive Standen clearly did not even try to study.

The lone bright spot in this entire picture, which surprised even me, were the ever-so-brief times that Mike Tyson was on screen. Honestly, Mike was great and much better than he had been in his cameos in years past. He has gotten consistently better, especially over the last decade, and realistically adds value to a lot of projects now.

In the end, this action movie underwhelmed, underperformed and undermined the action genre setting a new low bar for what is acceptable in said genre.