Revenge

Based on Jim Harrison’s novella, Revenge follows Kevin Costner’s Jay Cochran as he lands in a whole mess of trouble after he begins sleeping with the wife (Madeleine Stowe’s Miryea) of a notorious gangster (Anthony Quinn’s Tibey). Director Tony Scott, working from a script by Harrison and Jeff Fiskin, delivers an often extraordinarily deliberate and padded-out thriller that’s rarely, if ever, able to justify its 124 minute running time, as the movie suffers from a mostly uneventful first half that generally feels as though it could (and should) have been condensed into a tight half hour – with the let’s-get-on-with-it-already vibe compounded by Scott’s inability to transform Costner and Stowe’s respective characters into wholeheartedly compelling, sympathetic figures. (And it doesn’t help, certainly, that the movie contains an undercurrent of unpleasantness towards dogs.) The almost tolerable atmosphere, then, is due to Jeffrey Kimball’s lush cinematography and a final third that admittedly fares better than one might’ve anticipated, although, in terms of the latter, any such improvements come far too late to undo the damage wreaked by the picture’s predominantly disposable opening hour – which ultimately does cement Revenge‘s place as a rare out-and-out misfire from an otherwise reliable filmmaker.

*1/2 out of ****