Hey, I enjoy a good revenge movie as well as the next guy, even though I know forgiveness is the better way. Revenge films satisfy base urges in all of us. But, holy smokes, this crosses the line a little bit with the glorification of such....at least with the ending (which I won't give away but involves Sharon Stone's character).
Along the way is a fun ride as the revenge-obsessed Stone hires Sylvester Stallon (The Specialist, a term for his bomb-making talents) to kill all the people responsible for her parents' murder years earlier.
The villains are over-the-top, to say the least. One almost has to laugh out loud at one of them: James Woods. Few people in his era (70s and 80s mainly) were better at playing despicable villains than Woods, and in this film he plays that role to the hilt. He also rattles off the best line in the movie when he tells some tourist to "get a new shirt, too."
The other villains are played by Eric Roberts and Rod Steiger. Roberts is nasty and arrogant all the way and Steiger - as he has so often since the 1970s - appears cartoonish in his over-acting.
The film moves quickly which means it's very entertaining and some of the bombing scenes are quite memorable, such as a chunk of a condo building falling into the ocean.
Even though the villains are really nasty, there are no "good guys" here, either. Everyone is seriously flawed, as is the message of the film. I guess this is one of those "guilty pleasure" movies they talk about, because I still enjoy watching it every five or so years.
