A Father's Revenge

Mr Pestalozzi, I gather you expected an exact copy of actual facts in a situation like this one. Guess what... it's a MOVIE. Entertainment. You give opinions about the roles, how well they are played, the story itself (what happens, not if in real life they are so, and the quality of the screenplay. Otherwise, keep reading History and watch documentaries. Not for you, definitely.

I first saw this a few years ago when I could not find anything good (and new) at the rental store one day. I recall being surprised at how good it was and recently purchased it on DVD on eBay.

Brian Dennehy plays a high school sports coach. His daughter is an airline flight attendant who is working her first flight to Europe. Upon arrival she immediately becomes a kidnap victim - along with the rest of the crew of the plane she is on.

Feeling negotiations and diplomatic solutions are going nowhere, he (Dennehy) decides to take a more personal approach to solving the problem.

Like a great number of the more dutiful denizens of Dennehy county, I humbly consider his exciting 1988 offering from the charismatic, much loved character actor to be one of Dennehy's very best! This pacy, above average revenge thriller has angered patriarch, Paul Hobart (Brian Dennehy) desperately taking the law into his own hands when his only daughter, Karen (Helen Patton) is held hostage by increasingly murderous leftist terrorists in Frankfurt, Germany. Acting alongside the burly Dennehy is a juicy-looking, Joanna Cassidy, an oleaginous, Ron Silver, and, Anthony 'Callan' Valentine is on especially menacing, fleet-fisted form as stilleto cool, ex-SAS operative Vickers. Herzfeld's gritty, pulse-quickening drama 'A Father's Revenge' remains a compelling 80s Euro-thriller!!!! The darker than expected tone, moody cityscapes and sporadic brutality lend an additional gravitas to Herzfeld's gripping, far from humdrum 80s TV Movie! The agreeably synth heavy soundtrack is by notable German film composer, Klaus Doldinger.

Honestly, this movie deserves a higher rating. I saw it several years ago in television and have been trying to buy it with no success. This movie is a fantastic thriller and Brian Dennehy is an excellent actor. Hope to have the opportunity of seeing this marvelous film again. If someone can tell me where I can get Father's Revenge, I'll appreciate it.

I spent most of the film worrying that Brian Dennehy was about to drop dead from a heart attack. He's obviously a big man, but in this film he runs everywhere! Whether it be chasing terrorists through Frankfurt, or just running around outside while his wife discovers that their daughter has been kidnapped in Germany by a bunch of terrorists.

Don't get me wrong, Dennehy's a good actor and very convincing here, but this film spends a long long time getting around to tracking down the terrorist. Probably quite realistic in that sense, and I suppose the film does a good job of showing what a father would do in order to rescue his daughter, but I could have done with more rampaging and gunfights than folks standing around discussing the moral aspects of torture.

Quite frank(furt)ly, you might enjoy this film, but you'll have to condition yourself for a slow time, as most of the action happens in the last ten minutes. People rate this more highly than I do, and you might too, but I just needed a bit more morph to keep me going.