REVENGE (2017)

Set in an alternate universe where everybody has gallons and gallons of excess blood in their body, REVENGE tells the unoriginal, but entertaining story of a rich guy (and part-time Sherminator cosplayer) who takes a girl out to his stylish desert fuck pad for a little bit of boot knocking.  The boot knocking is cut short though when the rich guys scumbag friends show up early for a planned hunting trip.  Being total pieces of shit, one of the friends rapes the girl while the other ignores her screams.  The rich guy gets upset that his wife might find out, so he kills the girl...except that she didn't die.  Nope, she's still alive and before you you can say "Rambo III", she fixes her wounds with fire and sets out for revenge.   Normal murder revenge, not I SPIT ON YOUR GRAVE dick chopping revenge.  That was disappointing.

Lack of penis violence aside, REVENGE was a fun watch.  Quick pace, good acting, silly characters, overstylized art direction that was equally exhausting and fun, beautiful locations, continuity errors, minor nudity (both male and female), a fair amount of blood.  One thing that did irritate me was the television in the guys house.  Multiple times throughout the movie, the television was turned on and every time it was just something bland like a car race or an infomercial.  If the filmmakers had been wearing their thinking caps they would have, earlier in the film, put on nature films about wolves or alligators or other predators attacking prey...then later at the end of the film, during the final showdown, they should have put on something stressful, like the dinner scene/chase scene from the original THE TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE.  Just my two cents.

Not the greatest thing ever made, but still a fun watch.  Check it out.

THE MECHANIC (1972)

Los Angeles.  An older, professional hitman (Charles Bronson) takes a younger man (Jan-Michael Vincent) under his wing as both a protege and assistant.  After that, things start to get a little gay, but not really since the studio chickened out on the original story and instead ended up with a garbled film that doesn't seem to know what it wants to be.

The assassination portions of THE MECHANIC are entertaining enough in a dated, early 1970's action movie sort of way, but the character development is weak.  According to Wikipedia, Lewis John Carlino's original script was suppose to be "...a commentary on the use of human relationships and sexual manipulation in the lives of two hired killers. It was supposed to be a chess game between the older assassin and his young apprentice."  That actually sounds interesting, but unfortunately, that's not what ended up on screen.  At all.  I wish, that, if the studio was gonna purge the gay stuff (and therefore the main subject of the script!), they would have just made another movie altogether.  Instead, the audience is left with a confused mess about two single men who, when not murdering people together, hang out together 24/7 and stare at each other longingly.

Confused pacing that alternates between slow and fast, zero nudity, mildly entertaining kills, one nice car-pushed-off-a-cliff wreck, okay acting, boring dialogue, goofy scenes of Bronson acting sophisticated while thinking really hard, a 16-minute section where there is zero dialogue, two men at the zoo touching fingers, awesome old movie posters.

THE MECHANIC is entertaining enough for a single viewing, but I have no desire to ever watch it again...or at least soon. Knowing me, I'll watch it again.

Remake - The Mechanic
Remake, Part 2 - Mechanic: Resurrection