Taglines: There’s only one passion more uncontrollable than love.
Revenge movie storyline. Michael “Jay” Cochran has just left the Navy after 12 years. He’s not quite sure what he’s going to do, except that he knows he wants a holiday. He decides to visit Tiburon Mendez, a powerful but shady Mexican businessman who he once flew to Alaska for a hunting trip. Arriving at the Mendez mansion in Mexico, he is immediately surprised by the beauty and youth of Mendez’ wife Miryea. Their attraction to each other is undeniable, but Cochran is aware that Mendez is a powerful, vindictive, and very possessive man who does not tolerate betrayal.
Revenge is a 1990 romantic thriller film directed by Tony Scott and starring Kevin Costner, Anthony Quinn, Madeleine Stowe, Miguel Ferrer and Sally Kirkland. Some scenes were filmed in Mexico. The film is a production of New World Pictures and Rastar Films and was released by Columbia Pictures. Revenge also features one of John Leguizamo’s earliest film roles. The film is based on a novella written by Jim Harrison and published in Esquire magazine in 1979. Harrison, who also wrote Legends of the Fall, co-wrote the script.
Film Review for Revenge
Never underestimate the power of the written word. During a festive dinner party in Mexico, Jay Cochran (Kevin Costner), a former United States Navy fighter pilot, and Miryea (Madeleine Stowe), his hostess, happen to meet in the library of her husband’s magnificent hacienda. Elsewhere on the estate the guests are dancing, drinking, watching fireworks and being rude to the servants.
Cochran, bored by the fun of others, is browsing through a favorite volume when the beautiful young Miryea enters. She glances at the title of the book, then quotes Federico Garcia Lorca in Spanish. The charmed Cochran, in turn, quotes more Lorca in Spanish to Miryea.
In less time than it takes to say ”se habla espanol,” Cochran and Miryea are tearing off their clothes to couple behind a locked door. Their heat makes them heedless of their proximity to old Tiburon (Anthony Quinn), called Tibey, Miryea’s husband and Cochran’s best friend as well as his partner in all-male tennis doubles and companion on comradely quail shoots.
Tibey respects Cochran. Cochran respects Tibey. They share a sense of masculine honor, but that goes sailing out the puerta (door) when Cochran takes a gander at Miryea and realizes that they share a passion for Lorca.
Tibey is not idly named. In Spanish, tiburon means shark. Having risen from humble beginnings, Tibey is rich, powerful and ruthless. An ambitious politician can be elected president of Mexico with Tibey’s support. When someone says the wrong thing at the dinner table, Tibey takes the offender into the library, where a bodyguard shoots him in the head. In addition to respect and honor, Tibey puts great store by manners. Tibey means trouble. This is the setup of ”Revenge,” a flaccid movie version of Jim Harrison’s slightly less flaccid 1979 novella, adapted by Mr. Harrison and Jeffrey Fiskin, and directed by Tony Scott (”Top Gun” and ”Beverly Hills Cop II”).
By taking the story, more or less intact, from the novella, and shaping it to fit the screen, the movie makers have also set it adrift. Mr. Harrison’s macho neo-Hemingway prose (studded with Spanish words followed by neatly parenthesized English translations) is not great. It does, however, reflect the intensity and focus of a narrative of betrayal and revenge.
The movie is soft and aimless. ”Revenge” is the kind of film in which subsidiary characters and events are more interesting than anything the movie is supposed to be about. Even the brutality has no shock effect. A pretentious sound track score absorbs the attention. The movie is also too prettily photographed, much of the time, apparently, through one of those rose-tinted windshields designed to cut down the glare.
When the images are not overly filtered, they are chicly smoky. It’s no wonder. Though they have electricity, everybody in Mr. Scott’s Mexico, rich and poor alike, is crazy about candles. There haven’t been as many lighted candles in one movie since ”The Song of Bernadette.”
After Tibey and his men interrupt a lovers’ tryst, slash Miryea’s face and beat Cochran to a bloody pulp, leaving him for dead, ”Revenge” becomes a film of lethargic pursuit. Cochran seeks to find Miryea and, if necessary, even the score with Tibey.
The code of honor by which these men operate, and which the movie seems to find romantic, is none too easy to take seriously. After all, Cochran did betray Tibey, and Tibey himself has been a menace to his own society long before Cochran’s appearance.
The performances are without conviction. Mr. Costner and Miss Stowe look right, but they never appear to connect with the movie or with each other, even when one is atop the other. There is no passion in their love scenes, which might justify their behavior (as it does when William Hurt and Kathleen Turner collide in ”Body Heat”). Hot and steamy comes out chill and dry.
Mr. Quinn plays Tibey as a sort of cross between his roles in ”The Greek Tycoon” and ”Zorba the Greek.” He even does a brief solo on the dance floor accompanied by peasant musicians. He’s by far the best thing in the movie, which, all things considered, isn’t saying much.
Revenge (1990)
Directed by: Tony Scott
Starring: Kevin Costner, Anthony Quinn, Madeleine Stowe, Tomas Milian, Joaquín Martínez, James Gammon, Jesse Corti, Sally Kirkland, Luis de Icaza
Screenplay by: Jim Harrison
Production Design by: Benjamín Fernández, Michael Seymour
Cinematography by: Jeffrey L. Kimball
Film Editing by: Chris Lebenzon, Michael Tronick
Costume Design by: Aude Bronson-Howard
Set Decoration by: Crispian Sallis, J. Fernando Solorio
Art Direction by: Jorge Sainz, Thomas E. Sanders
Music by: Jack Nitzsche
Distributed by: Columbia Pictures, New World Pictures
Release Date: February 16, 1990
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