Year: 2007
Genre: Action, Crime
Country: Russia
Language: English (dubbed from Russian)
Starring: Denis Nikiforov, Peter Arpesella, Jeremy Batiste, Giovanni Bejerano, Alvaro Orlando, Victor Lopez
Eye candy: Yelena Panova, Ekaterina Malikova
Director: Anton Megerdichev
Run time: 135 minutes
DVD distributor: Alliance Films
When you get over the bad dubbing from Russian into English (still with thick, thick Russian accents, of course), the humour is gone from Revenge. But at least you have some really hot chicks to look at. Once you have looked at Ekaterina Malikova and Yelena Panova for a while, there is little else to see. Thankfully, the boxing is pretty intense and cool. Then again, the boxing comes at the end of a very long film, which means you have quite a while to wait.
The Russian dubbing is fun for ten minutes, the hot chicks are interesting for twenty, then there is a long stretch in the middle, about an hour and a half, in which very little happens. Well, Artem (Denis Nikiforov) gets another shot at the big title match, then he puts a guy in a coma in a brawl at the gym, then that guy’s father (a mob boss) decides to kill Artem to avenge his son and kidnaps Artem’s girlfriend, leading the boxer on a trail of revenge and murder and mayhem, leading up to some double crosses and (somehow) the long-awaited title fight.
So, all that stuff happens. But it isn’t nearly as interesting as it sounds. Only the boxing match at the end of the film redeems the movie at all, but it sort of exists in its own little film, as it has very little to do with the rest of the movie. It would be almost worth renting Revenge, just for that boxing match. But there are Muhammad Ali fights on youtube that are equally compelling. So it’s a wash. Revenge (also called Shadow Boxing 2 elsewhere in the world, and Boy s Tenyu 2 in Russia) comes out January 26th from Alliance Films.