Vindicta

I'm writing this with 30 minutes left. The main actor knows Latin and it's a good thing she does because what else would they do to look up what phrases mean? Oh yeah, they could google it.

This movie is neither scary or entertaining but I took the time to watch it and I appreciate you taking the time to read my review.

Jeremy Piven and Sean Aston are in this, and they probably didn't realize what they were signing up for. The script is kind of a mess, I guess there are fire riots going on and the police are nowhere to be found, leaving a paramedic to crack the case.

I was going to watch a Jennifer Lawrence movie on Netflix and ended up watching this instead and I profoundly regret it, guess I'll start cleaning while this move finishes.

Greetings again from the darkness. Sometimes low budget horror movies work, and sometimes they don't. As a general guideline, the less complicated they are, the better the chance of successful entertainment. Director Sean McNamara (THE KING'S DAUGHTER, 2022) is one of the more prolific directors you'll find. His work includes TV series, videos, short films, and feature films. He currently has 15 projects in the hopper. Sean is a busy man.

With a script by Ian Neligh and Steven Paul, this film offers moments of hope, but mostly it's too ambitious ... a rare criticism these days. Trying to tackle too many story lines creates a mess in the exact place a decent little genre film could have been born. Elena Kampouris (MY BIG FAT GREEK WEDDING 2 & 3) stars as Lou, a rookie paramedic just out of training. Fire Chief Rick (Sean Astin, THE LORD OF THE RINGS franchise) reluctantly assigns her to a first ride in the middle of riots, protests, and fires in a rough part of Seattle.

In addition to the mass chaos in the city, there is a masked killer on the loose - one who thrives on vicious and violent attacks. Suspicions arise when the same building burns that burned five years earlier, killing a mother and son. Fortunately, Lou is not a typical newbie. She possesses fighting skills and is fluent in Latin and Mandarin. Latin comes in quite handy since the killer scrawls his messages in Latin, leaving Lou to assist Detective Russo (Travis Nelson) with clues in the case.

In addition to her skills, Lou is also the idealistic daughter of retired cop played by Jeremy Piven ("Entourage"). The two are so close she even has a bobblehead of him on her car dash. Lou still blames her 9-year-old self for not saving her mother's life, no matter how many times people remind her she was just a kid. Perhaps you are starting to sense the issues with the film, and I have yet to mention the corruption and greed at the heart of the killer's mission of vengeance. One nice touch is the mask ... it's Michelangelo's David, and it's plenty creepy, even if most of the characters here don't come across as real people. Elena Kampouris is to be commended for giving her all to the role, but the writers and the film likely would have benefited from the KISS approach, Opening in select theaters and on digital beginning October 6, 2023.

My Google Latin didn't come out as expected, but at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter, id quod est.

Vindicta feels like a meld of a couple of other movies, without their budget, Daredevil (2003) and Elektra (2005) come to mind, as somebody else stated in these reviews. It does seem to be a bit of a mash, parts were good, others not. Writers Ian Neligh and Steven Paul were possibly not on the same page. That's just my opinion though.

Elena Kampouris was, I felt, miscast in this role, although she did have some credible parts in this movie.

David (Daniel Cudmore) wore this mask that only had two small holes for his eyes. His peripheral vision must have been crap and wouldn't have helped him on his killing spree.

Jeremy Piven was in this, and that's all I have to say about it, that's how impactful his presence was.

Anyway, overall, Vindicta had a chance to be good, but all it managed was average. I would recommend this, but with the above warnings.

The movie in general, and the ending specifically, are beyond stupid. But I like what happened to Jeremy Piven. That was nice.

Plus watching Travis Nelson in a suit for an hour and a half is a good use of anyone's time.

There isn't much more to say. It comes across as a C-story plotline in a WB spinoff of a spinoff of a spinoff of a DC television program. As if they scrapped the bottom of the barrel of comic characters and added dumb cops.

Think Catwoman's cousin's hairdresser's cop brother moves to Seattle and finds all the worst type of overly elaborate serial killers with goofy MOs. Then a Serbian AI bot farm wrote the script.

Yeah. Costumes were viewable though.

Vindicta is a revenge serial killer film. It follows the tropes of this genre almost to the T. It is heavily cliched and trite, both in plotting and dialogue. Lead character is a spunky, tough woman who is a paramedic following in her fire fighter father. Oh, and she studied languages in college, specifically Latin and Chinese. This is important because the killer writes Latin phrases at each murder site. (Oh she also speaks Mandarin because she was raised in China town. No reason for this other than one other minor character speaks Mandarin for her to speak in an emergency situation.)

Stereotypical characters abound simply to fit plotting and structuring of the film. So many elements of this film are contrived that they blatantly shout their message out of the screen.

Not hugely mysterious, so the ending isn't much of a shock. It could almost be a good drinking game given how predictable this film is. Though I wouldn't want to watch it a second time.