35
Metascore
23 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75TV Guide MagazineTV Guide MagazineThough the film gets off to an indifferent start, bogged down by too many talking heads, by the time Cochran plunges headlong into corruption, Scott is operating at something like full throttle.
- 63Chicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertChicago Sun-TimesRoger EbertRevenge plays like a showdown between its style and its story. It combines the slick, high-tension filmmaking fashion of today with the values and sexual stereotyping of yesterday. It's such a good job of salesmanship that you have to stop and remind yourself you don't want any.
- 63Chicago TribuneGene SiskelChicago TribuneGene SiskelRevenge is quite entertaining in its countdown to the first quivering coupling between Costner and Stowe. He trembles; her nostrils flair. But once they`ve made it, the film turns ugly as Costner foolishly seeks a vacation idyll with her in his small Mexican vacation home. The beatings that follow are plentiful enough to leave no one unscarred.
- 50IGNIGNIt achieved a cult following for its uncompromising brutality, but it never really earned the critical or financial success many thought it deserved.
- 40EmpireEmpireIt's not just the saturated ultra-violence which make this film difficult to watch - there is something just not convincing about this vehicle for Costner's darker side. One thing is for sure though, driving a Jeep will never be the same again.
- 40Los Angeles TimesPeter RainerLos Angeles TimesPeter RainerThe plot for Revenge, based on Jim Harrison’s 1978 novella, seems ideal for a great galvanizing pulp thriller, but the movie bogs down in melodramatic murk.
- 30The New York TimesVincent CanbyThe New York TimesVincent CanbyA flaccid movie version of Jim Harrison's slightly less flaccid 1979 novella...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.
- 25Entertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanEntertainment WeeklyOwen GleibermanThe trouble with Scott’s movies is that they’re not just star vehicles. They’re about the aesthetics of celebrity, about the narcissism that’s going on offscreen. If Revenge ends up knocking Costner down a peg, it’ll be just what he needs — and deserves.
- 20Washington PostHal HinsonWashington PostHal HinsonTony Scott's Revenge is fascinating for one reason only -- as an example of full-scale, mega-star perversity. The star, in this case, is Kevin Costner, and there's a willfulness in the extremes to which he's gone here to alienate his public. Costner pitches his performance at his audience like a dare, as if he were seeing how far out on a limb it's willing to climb with him.