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 I have not seen this film in ages, but it is much better than I remembered. Kevin Costner was a good actor when he didn't over think his movie roles. Yes, he hit the jackpot with Dances With Wolves, but he should have went back to doing more mindless movies like Revenge, where one can never take him too seriously.
In Revenge, Costner, as Michael J. “Jay” Cochran, is sort of a transplanted Bull Durham in a south of the border drug movie. To be more specific, he is a recently retired Navy pilot who wants to visit an unlikely friend.
Anthony Quinn as Tiburon “Tibby” Mendez is about as manly and ferocious as a villain you will find. He was the perfect choice to play a Mexican drug lord. Though he will not be remembered for this flick—considering the magnitude of his career—he was damn good as the main villain in Revenge. Somehow, Quinn was able to lend some sort of depth to what had to be written up as a purely brutal character.
Tibby’s sexy young wife is Madeleine Stowe as Miryea Mendez. Naturally, she will fall in love with Cochrane and they will soon realize how brutal of a person Mr. Mendez can be.
As a guest of Mr. Mendez, Cochrane finds himself at a dinner with some lesser crime associates. One guy is talking about animals he killed. Cochrane patronizes the man. Later the man tells Mr. Mendez, "Though he is your friend, he insulted us twice…" I like how the Latino drug lords read into all the nuance of simple looks, tonality of comments, etc..
The set up to the plot is sort of hard to believe, that a good clean cut guy like Cochrane, a jet fighter pilot no less, would be so naive as to not recognize that his friend, a man he saved while hunting, was a psychotic, lying killer and immersed in a world of narcotics. And if we are to assume he did know, then what of his character?
From a plot standpoint, it is interesting the "deed" that sort of sets off the revenge comes nearly at the halfway point into the film. Usually, it should at least occur in the first third of the plot, at least according to most How To Write A Fucking Screenplay books.
The dirty deed is consummated amidst a raucous Mexican celebration, with Anthony Quinn playing the role of Brando's Godfather at a wedding celebration. The next day Cochrane is playing tennis. It slowly becomes clear that Quinn's wife now is in love with him and is not content to go back to being the young beautiful drug lord’s wife.
She gets into his Jeep, while there are guards standing around. Costner is beginning to realize he has a major problem on his hand. She wants to stay with him.
But, instead of doing the smart thing, and getting the fuck out of Dodge, or Puerto Vallarta, he calls his buddy and confesses he is in love with the Don's wife. Rightly, his buddy figures Cochrane is in some deep shit. So what does he do? What any guy would probably do. Cochrane nails her again and again and again. They arrange a secret rendezvous at a cabin. Mr. Mendez discovers this because he is taping the phone calls of his wife, who tells her friend she is in love with his trusted buddy. Oh, boy. That can't be good.
A scene that makes this movie just that however is when Mendez becomes hurt that he discovers his young wife is in love with his handsome young friend. And that is an excellent point, often made in How To Write A Fucking Screenplay books. You give the villain a human quality. Have him pet dogs or something. Who can't identify with a man who is both crushed his wife is in love with someone else and that he can never, no matter how wealthy and powerful he is, ever appeal to her because he is well old, wrinkly, and past his prime? Well, okay, most people could not relate to that exactly. But, it would suck.
Cochrane and Mrs. Mendez get jacked up at his cabin. Mr. Mendez and his crew shoot his dog, burn his house down and cut up Miryea’s face. Though, curiously, they never make sure Cochrane dies. In the girl’s case, they kept her alive because they wanted to give her over to a local whorehouse while hooking her on a daily dose of drugs. They tell in so many words that at the whorehouse she can now indulge her passion for men.
You will never believe this. Cochrane recovers. He survived remarkably well and other than being dirty and unshaven, he seemed to suffer no lingering effects of his brutal beating, one in which the good Samaritan who found him, thought he wasn't going to live much longer.
From here, Cochrane falls in with a posse, whose members all have claims against Mendez. And, so one by one, they work their way back to Mendez and much blood is spilled along the way. Eventually, they corner Mr. Mendez on an open plain and just when we think they are going to blast him, a heartbroken Tibby requests that Cochrane ask his forgiveness for taking his wife from him. Cochrane does and in doing so discovers that after being remanded to a bordello, Miryea is now recovering at a convent; well, dying might be a better word. How nice of Tibby. What a soft heart he really had huh?
Revenge is a well engineered movie. It is stylish, well acted, well cast, bloody, and very manly. Not sure there is any sort of moral point at the end of the story. Hell, Miryea seemed to be merely a trophy for the men to squabble over. From a plot standpoint, revenge movies make some people uncomfortable. It is largely saying “an eye for an eye” and all is right with the world. So if an unspeakable evil deed has been committed it is carte blanche for the victim to commit the same horrific deeds against the perpetrators. A rather barbaric concept, which nonetheless, powers Revenge both as a movie and an idea.
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