Revenge: Film Review
I quite enjoy a revenge movie and love films starring a female kicking ass and taking names, so Revenge was always going to be up my street, but I liked it way more than I imagined.
Matilda Lutz stars as Jen, an American socialite who is flown by helicopter to a remote luxury home in the middle of the desert for a few days of passion with married French billionaire Richard (Kevin Janssens). Everything goes wrong when his pals Stan (Vincent Colombe) and Dimitri (Guillaume Bouchede) arrive early for their hunting trip. Jen has to battle off unwanted sexual advances from Stan, who eventually rapes her while Richard is out, and to stop her from talking about it, Richard pushes her off a cliff and leaves her for dead. BIG MISTAKE.
This is completely wild and exhilarating. It is bloody, gruesome and pretty damn grim at times so definitely not for the faint-hearted or squeamish. Jen goes through so much – raped, impaled on a tree, burned – so you are absolutely behind her killing off these dudes. I was cheering for her out loud on multiple occasions. I would be like, ‘Yes girl!’ or ‘Oh my God, don’t do that!’ In the beginning, you don’t care for her much because she’s a mistress, she’s a tease and you don’t know much about her other than that. You never learn more background details about Jen but her actions and strength will say so much about her character anyway and you want her to succeed 100%.
Lutz was incredible and I want to see her in more stuff. Jen goes through major trauma and just carries on, completely focused on her revenge mission. Jen is basically in her underwear the whole time and Lutz looks amazing. The role is very physical, she really gets put through the wringer and ends up looking like shit and covered in cuts, burns, and gashes. I felt tired just watching her!
The supporting guys are fine too but to be honest, it’s Lutz’s film. You’re not paying much attention to them and you don’t really care about what happens to them. Richard is the most obvious arsehole, Stan is the rapist, and Dimitri just turns a blind eye to it all. They deserve to go.
Revenge is really exciting and quite an intense watch. I was on edge often, bracing myself for what was going to happen next. It is brutal, bloody and very, very violent – but you shouldn’t really expect anything less given the premise. I hope this makes Lutz a star.
In cinemas from Friday 11th May