Vindicta

Wow. Full disclosure, I couldn't make it through this. It honestly felt like a bad attempt at a parody of "Seven" but directed by someone whose background is in Nickelodeon sitcoms and has never seen the film. If you want to piss off Jeremy Piven in a bar, ask him about this project. Fairly early on (but not too long before I shut it off) there is a scene where they show a defunct theater marquee advertising Jerry Lewis' "A Slapstick of Another Kind," one of the worst wide theatrical release films ever produced. I assume it was a tip of the cap or a thumb of the nose to someone on the production related to that steaming present. In retrospect, it may be the best thing in the film because it makes me laugh that such a horrible picture would intentionally reference one of the few films it keeps company on the very lowest of celluloid rungs with. The best I can say about this picture is the camera is always in focus though the lighting is all wrong, along with its direction, script and existence.

Somehow, I had some hopes for this one. The cast is good, the premise was interesting, it just needed a good direction and execution.

Which completely lacked sadly. A movie that is very fast forward, few stops, always on the run, until the flashes start..and end with the movie.

The origin story here takes forever and becomes annoying and infuriating, the development stops, the killings take a back seat and we are in a third act that does nothing but hit us in the head with why is this all happening.

It started quite good I must say, very raw movie that showed exactly what it wanted to show with no holdbacks, but it became sort of a joke while moving on. Scenes that looked ridiculous, dialogue written by kids, out of the blue nothing seemed to make sense anymore. I really think it had some nice vibes from Sin City and V for Vendetta, but wow did this turn bad.

You should give Major Grom: Plague Doctor a chance, that one actually is a good movie and has the same style.

Vindicta is not recommended at all, movies like Daredevil, the short version or Elektra are its equals.

Cheers!

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.

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.

I thought this could maybe (please) be a story of a clever serial killer with a grudge. More like Kevin Spacey in Se7en. It's not.

Worse for the plot line is having a pretty young paramedic who coincidentally speaks Mandarin and Latin and knows jujitsu...And nobody at all thinks to look up events from only 5 years earlier with this same building?

The irritation for me was the mix of dog Latin with quotes from Virgil's Aeneid, and, worse still nobody explains the inclusion of Ancient Greek gods rather than Ancient Roman gods in this Latin fest. Ancient Greeks spoke Ancient Greek. And they came well before there even was Latin. Ancient Romans spoke Latin. And they had their own gods.