My Name Is Vendetta

"To kill or be killed. This is the law. Showing mercy is just a sign of weakness. It's a lesson I wish I could forget." Santo (Alessandro Gassmann)

In My Name is Vendetta, you can transport the manic spirit of Taken to Milan by way of Sicily, and you have your father, daughter fix mixed with the Sicilian Mafia. Violent action does not get better than this with Santo and young daughter Sofia (Ginevra Francesconi) on the run and running to revenge on a Sicilian Mafia that slaughtered his brother and wife.

It's not as stylized as Kill Bill or John Wick, but it has a familial charm with good camera and lighting work.

While you can see immediately this is not one of my usual art films; it is rather a thriller with the popular American motif of family reconciliation prevalent today in our super-hero films and family dramas. Netflix gives you a holiday retreat from goody-goody to exercise your natural instinct at self-preservation with naughty on the side.

It's a smart, bloody business emphasizing the central role now occupied by smart-phone technology. Facial recognition propels the action as bad guys can find good guys by connecting photos from your phone to your current location if you should be foolish enough to snap one when your dad warned you against taking it.

So the tech goes as everybody tracks everybody to lead to a final confrontation between Santo and Mafia boss, Angelo (Remo Girone). Sofia, with better-than-middlin' action skills, participates to bring home the sweetness between father and daughter and exciting action tropes.

My name is Vendetta (a descriptive title if there ever was one) is simply good old-fashioned revenge thrills set in a Euro-trash world whose menace is better because we watch from the safety of our homes.

Just remember, your phone is ever the willing partner in crime.

Netflix knows.

This is a decent foreign thriller about a defected Mafia hitman who resurfaces due to a happenstance of his attempt to lead an anonymous new life. When the Mob discovers he is alive they come after him, and his family, seeking to kill them. Of course it is not that simple. He is not an easy man to kill. Accompanied by his surviving daughter he seeks to finish what he started years earlier. There is a slight similarity in this film, to The Professional, with Jean Renault and Natalie Portman; however, this one is not as good. There is decent action. The cast is decent enough and the cinematography is good. Decent enough, but not the best.

I expected a little more from this revenge flick. But the word Vendetta tricked me. Don't get me wrong. It isn't a bad flick. In fact, it does what it says in the title but the important issue is the father/daughter relation.

Luckily the plot has a twist which made it up for me to find it a good flick. Don't expect a Oscar worthy script. But what it does offer is a really good maffia revenge flick. It never goes over the top.

Compared to so much flicks about father/daughter revenge flicks, Taken is the most spoken about. I shall not do that. But I understand what they mean.

For some it can be on the edge of gore and in fact some killings are indeed in your face on-camera. Smashing heads is never an easy watch...

Gore 2/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 3/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5.

As "My Name Is Vendetta" (2022 release from Italy; 90 min) opens, we are introduced.to the Romeo family, with almost 18 yo Sofia being a little brad who, contrary to her dad's wishes, takes his picture during an camping outing. And next thing we know, that picture is hacked by a Mafia family who has been looking for him... At this point we are 10 min into the movie.

Couple of comments: I can't say that I was familiar with either the director or any of the cast. Turns out this is a straight-forward Italian "Death Wish" reminding crime drama where the bottom line is" 'kill or be killed (literally). In case you didn't pick it up from the movie's title, the dad turns out to be, oh the SHOCK, a one-man killing army, helped by his almost 18 yo daughter. This movie is about as sophisticated as a bull in a china shop, if you know what I mean. All that said, the movie wastes little time and this hour and a half just flew by.

"My Name Is Vendetta" was suggested to me by Netflix and based on that I gave it a shot. This isn't a bad movie, just straight-forward without any surprises whatsoever. If you are in the mood for an Italian revenge crime drama, I'd readily suggest you check it out, and draw your own conclusion.

The creators of this film took every cliche' of the "revenge" genre, mixed everything in a blender and pieced them together at random.

The daughter was made to look and act like Natalie Portman in "Leon", minus the acting skills.

Completely unoriginal and uninspiring dialogs, one dimensional characters, ultra predictable storyline.

It's a pity, because Alessandro Gassmann is a great actor with a lifelong acting experience, but in this film he could have been replaced by any mediocre actor and the result would have been the same.

The only positive I could find, was the stunning shooting location in the mountains of SouthTyrol, the German speaking province in the north of Italy.