During the Hong Kong International Film Festival, I spend
far more hours indoors in darkened rooms than usual ;S
Revenger (USA-Canada-France, 2016)
- Screening as part of the HKIFF's Gala Presentation program
- Walter Hill, director
- Starring: Michelle Rodriguez, Sigourney Weaver, Tony Shalhoub
Of
all my Hong Kong International Film Festival screening picks that
(already) had entries on the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and Rotten Tomatoes websites, Walter Hill's Revenger (aka Tomboy, and The Assignment)
had the lowest ratings by far. Yet I felt compelled to check out what
its director has deemed to be strictly a pulp fantasy because it stars
one of my favorite Hollywood actress and possesses a novel scenario
involving an expert surgeon who exacts a revenge on the hired gun who
killed her beloved brother that's so singular that many might be
convinced that the idea could only come out of a deranged mind.
Sigourney
Weaver is imperiously cool as Rachel Jane, a cosmetic surgeon who had
her medical license revoked some time back and now, for a different
transgression, finds herself incarcerated in a loony bin. Deemed so
dangerous that she has to be in a straitjacket when meeting a prison
psychiatrist (Tony Shalhoub) she obviously considers to be her
intellectual inferior, the disgraced doctor proves to have a sharp
tongue, piercing stare and steely demeanor of someone you'd be most
unfortunate to cross.
Without
realizing he had done so, criminal lowlife Frank Kitchen (Michelle
Rodriguez) did just that; and for his sins, gets turned by Rachel Jane
into a biological woman. Even with a significant prosthetic penis,
Michelle Rodriguez doesn't appear convincing as a biological man but
makes up for it with an eye-catching portrayal of an angry gunman
trapped in a nubile woman's body.
More than incidentally, I find it interesting that the
men that actresses like Brigitte Lin Ching Hsia have played in Hong
Kong movies tend to be on the refined side of the male equation but
that in this Western cinematic offering, the attempts to emphasize
male-ness looked to involve providing the actress with what
unfortunately proved to be too artificial-looking chest and facial hair
along with male reproductive organs. Two other technical aspects of Revenger
that I thought notable are its copious amounts of flashback scenes and
use of voiceovers that, when combined, make it so that Frank Kitchen
dominates the picture visually but it's Rachel Jane's voice, and
narrative, which feel most influential.
For
the most part though, this is the kind of film where it's probably best
not to overthink things and just enjoy the wild ride that's offered
up. In retrospect, I'm surprised that it wasn't part of the HKIFF's Midnight Heat program (even while having been accorded a late night screening slot). If nothing else, it could show (up) the likes of The Sleep Curse
that B-movies involving demented doctors (especially those with A-list
actors and/or actresses playing them) can indeed be wickedly
entertaining without needing to descend into the realm of the seriously
distasteful.
My rating for this film: 7.5
2 comments:
Hi ytsl,
This movie sounds like a lot of fun so I've pre-ordered the DVD. I am a fan of both actresses.
Hi sarah sbk --
Thanks for breaking your customary rule to only read reviews after you've seen the movie! Hope you won't regret doing so, and getting yourself a DVD of "Revenger"! :)
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