Vendetta 2022

I've been morbidly curious about the direct-to-video Bruce Willis "geezer teaser" films that have been pumped out in the past handful of years ever since I watched the RedLetterMedia videos on them. I've been recently rewatching Sons of Anarchy, and also listening to the podcast where Theo Rossi and Kim Coates (who both starred in that show) review episodes and share behind-the-scenes stories. The current episodes I'm on, near the end of S4, were recorded at the time Theo Rossi was filming this movie. He talks about it (vaguely, because NDAs and whatnot) at the start of the episode I just began. I decided why the hell not, time to finally satisfy my curiosity about these terrible-looking Bruce Willis cash-ins. If you look at the comments/reviews for any of them, you will see multiple people all saying how it's the boring kind of bad, not worth watching. Unfortunately, that isn't enough to satisfy my curiosity, and equally unfortunately, they are absolutely 100% correct.

They took the basic premise of John Wick, but made it boring as fuck. They spent the first hour of this 96 minute movie on the set up, and then there's like 4 actions scenes total. This movie fucking sucks.
I kept waiting for a reason as to why they killed William's daughter. When Rory immediately had a photo and info about William after Rory's brother was killed, I assumed they had targeted the daughter for a reason. Nope! It was just a random killing, and she happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. In this instance, the "wrong place" was sitting in the car when they drove by, and the "wrong time" happened to be when they were seeking out a random person to murder for literally no reason. But how did Rory know so much about William, so quickly, then?

There's not much to be said about Bruce Willis' performance in this movie that hasn't already been said a thousand times over about all of these recent films he's in. It's god awful. He's clearly not in the same room as the other actors most of the time, he lazily delivers his lines in the most bored and uninterested way possible, and sometimes he even pauses mid-sentence while he gets fed the rest of the line. It's both aggravating and sad.
But it's not just him. Everyone in this film sucks, except Theo Rossi. But that's mainly because his character is batshit insane, which allows him to ham it up to 11 and it still works. To be fair, no one has any material worth a shit to work with, so it's not completely the fault of the actors.
Why was Mike Tyson even in this? He was a pointless character.

Notes I had during the movie:

• In the beginning, Bruce Willis shoots the guy twice, he noticeably moves the gun between the shots, yet there's only one wound.
• Based on the film synopsis, I assumed that the daughter was going to be an incidental collateral casualty during a drive-by or something. Not that the evil gang was going to drive up in their comically large-rimmed cars, then specifically rip this girl out of her car, with the express purpose of executing her. What the fuck? Why??
• When William lied about not being able to identify the criminal on the stand, the judge immediately called for order even though there was no need to. They halfheartedly edited in some crowd noise, but it wasn't loud at all, and she called for order before the noise had even really started. Also you could see that there was only like 5 people in the crowd, lol
• Theo Rossi and that other guy are supposed to be Bruce Willis' children? ...Are they adopted? They don't even remotely resemble one another.
• "Why are you all zippered up?" is a bizarre thing to ask. Why would that be the first thing you ask??
• I was wondering how they managed to sustain this thriving criminal enterprise in small town bumfuck nowhere Georgia. But then they have more than one establishing shot that showed a city that is VERY CLEARLY not where they filmed, lmao. Gotta love those Georgia tax breaks. Good enough to film there, but then you have the issue where it is very obviously a small town and not a city.
• Ok, so Rory wants William to "suffer indescribably." But then he walks up behind him and is about to just shoot William in the head, which would be the opposite of suffering. Then, they have a chase (with the worst aim possible - they're not even trying to hit him it looks like), and afterwards when William is on the ground at their mercy, Rory says how he wants to watch him die. But then he turns and walks away, letting his henchman do the kill???? That's not watching him die!
• "There's a squad car outside, so we'll be fine for tonight. But first thing tomorrow morning, go to your folks, at least for tonight." Wow. Did no one edit this script?
• They shoot the wife in the head, but for Willy, the guy they actually want dead, they conveniently shoot him in the gut instead. And, sure, Rory has a bit of interaction with him as he lays there, ok. But then Rory just shoots him in the gut again, instead of going for the kill shot! And then walks away without confirming that he's dead! That makes no fucking sense!
• This has nothing to do with anything, but the subtitles for the scene in the hospital said (soft, lush music) and I thought that was hilarious. That's a highly ambitious description to use in this piece of shit movie.
• During the training montage, why does Willy put his hospital gown back on to exercise?? What?!
• "Come in here. Sit down. Why are you still here?" That is word-for-word a series of lines from Bruce Willis. God, this is fucking terrible, lmao.
• No one can aim in this movie, at all.
• Every gunshot in this movie sounds terrible. It's like they're all using airsoft guns.
• Mike Tyson punches someone during a gunfight for no good reason, but he's Mike Tyson. And then is promptly killed right afterwards.