A_Different_Drummer Review of My Name Is Vendetta

My Name Is Vendetta (2022)

Daring! -- invents a brand new Revenge Drama "player"

[6/10 · 1 December 2022]

You have to give credit to the writers of My Name is Vendetta for going where few scripts have dared to go. On paper, this movie starts off looking like a workable Italian riff off TAKEN 2008. (Which coincidentally is on my list of the best movies of all time -- see more below). The production values are solid, the direction and editing are lean and swift. Everything is as expected. And then we meet a character in the story that, to the best of my knowledge, after some 2000 IMDb reviews here, has never been seen before. The introduction of the "bratty daughter." Within the first 10 minutes of the story, the bratty daughter ignores the warning her father had given her to never take his picture. She not only takes his picture with her cell, when he is not looking, but immediately posts it to social media. Within a matter of seconds (it is a movie after all!) the mafia family that had been trying to find the father for years immediately spots the upload (using telemetry-based software?) and dispatches a hit team. The hit team makes an error and kills the girl's uncle and mother, but not the father. Who is, as it happens, an ex-mob assassin, and not the kind of guy you really want to tick off. The father and daughter reconnect, and he takes her to a safe house. As he packs his gear (guns and silencers) to go for the Vendetta, he gives her one easy-to-follow, simple, direction -- use the phone only to talk to him. No one else. The moment he leaves, she calls her boyfriend and instantly the Mob traces that call too. Another hit team is dispatched. By now you get the picture. If the viewer can tolerate dealing with this completely unexpected new film character -- the bratty daughter -- the movie is fast-moving and quite watchable. But that's a really big "if." ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))