Engaging revenge style film starts out like a good old fashioned noir film and builds in intensity as it goes on until it gets to the point where it starts to resemble Chan Woo Park's "Lady Vengeance" more then anything else. Quite suspenseful film deserves to be much better known in the US today, especially since wild changes in tone and cartoonish spurts of blood are much more widely embraced in American movies today. (in fact the wild climax of the movie reminded me of the crazy 88's sequence in the first Kill Bill film except done rather seriously but i'll get to that later) The film very much reminds me of something Brian DePalma would have made in that its a very well made suspense tale with a crazy climax, a beautiful score, and nods to other kinds of films from the past--it wouldn't be out of line to suggest that if you were a fan of something like Body Double or Dressed To Kill you would prob go for this one in a big way. (both great movies,both a lot of fun, both also with insane endings) It also reminds me of a Brian DePalma film in that as wildly entertaining as the endings to his films can be, they sometimes feel as if they're coming at the expense of their carefully built plot lines, but that's OK too i guess since they really just serve to draw you into the story and then shock you very nicely in the end.
Film stars out with 2 friends drunkenly lamenting the fact that this big cooperation wants to buy out the land that they make their living fishing on to turn it into yet another resort (or so they think, the bad guys actually have designs on turning said land into a nuclear power plant!) When one ends up witnessing the murder of the other, he ends up dragging his wife who is a deep sea diver into this conspiracy--the dead body of his friend is nowhere to be found and he wants her to dive in and find his body. While she's underwater, he ends up harpooned and she narrowly escapes being killed herself---i'm not giving any spoilers away, this all happens in the space of the film's first twenty or so minutes. The rest of the film is the wife's attempt to seek the killers, exert her revenge, and try to force the truth of the bad guys' conspiracy to light which is of course easier said then done.
This film is nice and suspenseful and is actually very old fashioned--this could have been the plot to a 50's noir that somehow ended up starring Esther Williams were she interested in wanting to do a film noir and not a big Technicolor musical. This is what i was thinking at least up until the first surprisingly violent interaction between the wife who is now posing as a prostitute and the first of the many henchmen to the bad guys she ends up meeting and um dispatching. That interaction at first is really jarring--because aside from the killing of her husband and his friend, the film hasn't been violent at all, so this extended sequence of her stabbing this henchman--at first to escape being identified--comes as a really shocking moment, and then the scene goes on with her repeatedly stabbing at him and all this blood soon spurting out of the henchman, and soon there's so much of it that the sequence would not be out of place in a Tarentino film. The movie which up until that point hadn't been even remotely funny even starts to develop a kind of sick sense of humor, the more this kind of thing takes place, the funnier it actually becomes which only goes to show you how well this film could have gone over in America were it to have been made in recent years rather then in the mostly conservative 80's. This all leads to an either brilliant or insane--or insanely brilliant last 15 or so minute sequence where the heroine--now fully deranged from her revenge quest just goes bonkers and decides to just stop playing games and start killing everyone she comes across from this now cartoonishly evil cooperation. Literally she takes a harpoon and just starts stabbing everyone she comes across. Its a great sequence--alive with so much energy that i rather wish the film was far better known if only so someone could post this sequence on you-tube and i could actually show it to other people! As entertaining as this sequence is tho it also shows you how far the film has gone from being a rather believable suspense film to an almost cartoonish violent kind of film--and while the whole sequence is well built up to, it does kind of go against the whole believable atmosphere that the film has been building up to so far. Still the old motto about those who end up seeking revenge is very apt here, and is also very entertaining if you don't mind the overall shift from straight suspense drama to over the top revenge style type of movie. Also any movie that can prompt a discussion after-wards about whether a harpoon could take out that many people at once is definitely one worth watching.
Film stars out with 2 friends drunkenly lamenting the fact that this big cooperation wants to buy out the land that they make their living fishing on to turn it into yet another resort (or so they think, the bad guys actually have designs on turning said land into a nuclear power plant!) When one ends up witnessing the murder of the other, he ends up dragging his wife who is a deep sea diver into this conspiracy--the dead body of his friend is nowhere to be found and he wants her to dive in and find his body. While she's underwater, he ends up harpooned and she narrowly escapes being killed herself---i'm not giving any spoilers away, this all happens in the space of the film's first twenty or so minutes. The rest of the film is the wife's attempt to seek the killers, exert her revenge, and try to force the truth of the bad guys' conspiracy to light which is of course easier said then done.
This film is nice and suspenseful and is actually very old fashioned--this could have been the plot to a 50's noir that somehow ended up starring Esther Williams were she interested in wanting to do a film noir and not a big Technicolor musical. This is what i was thinking at least up until the first surprisingly violent interaction between the wife who is now posing as a prostitute and the first of the many henchmen to the bad guys she ends up meeting and um dispatching. That interaction at first is really jarring--because aside from the killing of her husband and his friend, the film hasn't been violent at all, so this extended sequence of her stabbing this henchman--at first to escape being identified--comes as a really shocking moment, and then the scene goes on with her repeatedly stabbing at him and all this blood soon spurting out of the henchman, and soon there's so much of it that the sequence would not be out of place in a Tarentino film. The movie which up until that point hadn't been even remotely funny even starts to develop a kind of sick sense of humor, the more this kind of thing takes place, the funnier it actually becomes which only goes to show you how well this film could have gone over in America were it to have been made in recent years rather then in the mostly conservative 80's. This all leads to an either brilliant or insane--or insanely brilliant last 15 or so minute sequence where the heroine--now fully deranged from her revenge quest just goes bonkers and decides to just stop playing games and start killing everyone she comes across from this now cartoonishly evil cooperation. Literally she takes a harpoon and just starts stabbing everyone she comes across. Its a great sequence--alive with so much energy that i rather wish the film was far better known if only so someone could post this sequence on you-tube and i could actually show it to other people! As entertaining as this sequence is tho it also shows you how far the film has gone from being a rather believable suspense film to an almost cartoonish violent kind of film--and while the whole sequence is well built up to, it does kind of go against the whole believable atmosphere that the film has been building up to so far. Still the old motto about those who end up seeking revenge is very apt here, and is also very entertaining if you don't mind the overall shift from straight suspense drama to over the top revenge style type of movie. Also any movie that can prompt a discussion after-wards about whether a harpoon could take out that many people at once is definitely one worth watching.