Here we have two veterans of the Bosnian war. One American, Robert DeNiro, and a Serbian, who is played by John Travolta. Travolta’s character, Emil Kovac, holds a grudge against DeNiro’s character, who is Benjamin Ford.
The grudge is where Kovac is actually a Serbian war criminal who was supposedly executed by Ford and NATO troops after they liberated an internment camp. Somehow, Kovac lived after being shot in the back and now he wants revenge.
Emil is planning on having his revenge on Ford when he sees that Ford goes to his cabin in the woods. Ford wants to enjoy his retirement and he lives in isolation from his family. Once Ford is there, Emil tricks Ford into being a friend, not knowing that he has a sinister plan for him.
Rather than killing Ford, Emil decides to have a fight to death with Ford in the woods. Much of the action from here is tense and at times the violence is brutal, with neither side having a clear edge. Is it believable considering the fact that Emil is younger? I don’t know. If anything, it does make the movie unpredictable and I was on the edge of my seat throughout the movie.
It’s hard to believe that Kovac would want revenge in a fair fight. That doesn’t seem believable to me either. That seemed like a flaw that would have been easy to fix such as having Ford escape from the cabin. At least then, they could have a fair fight since Kovac wants to kill him.
Not to give away the ending but that didn’t seem believable to me either even thought it was unpredictable. Should someone have died in the fair fight? hard to say but the ending didn’t work for me.
I guess you can say that every actor has been in some bad movies and other people who reviewed this movie thought this was bad for both actors. It seemed like there were ways to make this movie better but since it was only in the theater for a few weeks, it was obvious that no one really wanted to see it.
I won’t say that this was the worst movie that Travolta and DeNiro have been in. If you like a movie with intense action and can check your imagination at the door, I would say that the fair fight kept the movie going for me until the ending. I still will only give this movie two stars.
Ron Hummer
No comments:
Post a Comment