VENDETTA (2022)

VENDETTA (2022)

Tagline: There is no justice, without war. 

(Action, Thriller, Poorly Planned Revenge) [R]

In this one former Marine, William Duncan’s daughter Kat is murdered without cause one day when they are just hanging out. Because the police in town look the other way when it comes to the Fetter crime family, William decides it’s time to hunt down Danny, the person responsible. As it turns out, Danny is the son of Donnie Fetter the crime family leader. In an eye for an eye war of attrition, the Fetters intend to take everything Duncan loves from him and vice-versa. 

If you read a lot of my reviews, you know that towards the end of Bruce Willis’s career in acting he was cranking out movies like crazy. Most have him as a very secondary character with very few lines. This is no exception. Bruce gets maybe 4 minutes of screen time in this as Donnie Fetter. I am not basing any of my review on his performance due to the situation he was in. You can look that up in my other reviews or online. What I am reviewing is everything else. One thing that was pretty clear in this thing is that the actors that got the most screen time were “expected” to step it up in the acting department and they did. This is in comparison to most low-budget action flicks coming out these days. By far the best of them all in this movie is Thomas Jane (RUN, HIDE, FIGHT) as Dante. He also gets all the best lines and really probably over-delivers here. 

I will say that, yes it does feel like we got some decent acting out of Clive Standen (TAKEN) but most of his performance as William Duncan feels like if you were at the dog track and the first 7 dogs in the box were all greyhounds, and then the 8th dog is a bulldog. That bulldog can run, and he might even look cool doing it, but he is going really stand out on that track and that is what’s going on here. Standen’s performance just seems off. Lauren Buglioli (WHITE ELEPHANT) gets limited screen time playing Jen Duncan and actually does a pretty decent job. Most people don’t know this, but Lauren is one of the busiest women in Hollywood right now with 27 movies or TV shows either completed or in post-production just since 2020. Wrapping up the major roles we also get Theo Rossi (ARMY OF THE DEAD) as Rory Fetter. I wanted to punch this character so hard, but that just means Rossi is killing it in these roles right now. Out of everyone on set, he definitely shined second only to Thomas Jane. 

Pacing wise this movie is pretty solid for the first half. In the second half of the movie I just kind of found myself hoping Dante would show up because he gives this movie its only bit of humor at all. Yes, we do get a tiny role from Mike Tyson as Roach and it works for what they asked him to do, but there wasn’t much screen time for him. I was not a fan of the soundtrack, but the score was more than adequate as was the cinematography. 

VENDETTA had a limited theatrical release bringing in only $169,260 at the box office. I would say this movie is for people that love Thomas Jane, Theo Rossi, or mildly entertaining revenge stories where not everything has a neat little bow on top. I have seen nearly 100 movies released in 2022 at this point and this one is definitely not in my bottom 20. So there’s that.

VENDETTA gets a 4 out of 7. A little more “hopeful” ending and a less “stiff” feeling performance out of some of the leads not named Bruce Willis would have bumped this up.

GRAPHICS ARE THE PROPERTY OF BAR NONE PRODUCTIONS AND ARE USED FOR REVIEW PURPOSES ONLY.