‘Vendetta’ Review: Bloody Payback of the Most Dull and Derivative Kind

variety.com:

Rene Rodriguez In “Vendetta,” a former U.S. Marine strikes back at the thugs who murdered his daughter, inciting a routine cycle of violence with occasional flashes of wit that feel like they were spliced in from a different, better movie.

Most of those moments have little to do with the main narrative, which follows William Duncan (Clive Standen, “Vikings”) as he tracks down the hooligans who executed his teenage daughter (Maddie Nichols) during an initiation rite.His revenge angers Donnie Fetter (Bruce Willis), a street-level crime boss who orders his loose-cannon son Rory (Theo Rossi) to do away with William and his wife (Jackie Moore).

Despite the warnings by a handwringing but ineffectual detective (Kurt Yue), who tells William violence can only beget more violence, the situation spirals out of control, as it always does in revenge thrillers of this kind.

The body count starts to mount. So do the implausibilities, along with the boredom. Writer-director Jared Cohn, a veritable Orson Welles of landfill B-movies, makes exactly one good decision in all of “Vendetta”: He allows actor Thomas Jane, playing a gun runner who helps William exact his murderous revenge, to ignore the film’s somber tone and do whatever he wants.Smoking a distractingly large pipe and always swigging from a bottle of beer regardless of the time of day, Jane is the only cast member who understands what kind of movie he’s making.