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ETERNAL REVENGE
aka
FALLEN ANGEL; REVENGE
Rating: 
Canada. 1999.
Director – Marc S. Greiner, Screenplay – Neil Goldberg, Producers – Stewart Harding & Stefan Wodoslawsky, Photography (some scenes b&w) – Georges Archambault, Music – Milan Kymlicka, Special Effects – Cineffects (Supervisor – Ryal Cosgrove), Production Design – Pierre Riopel. Production Company – Libra Pictures/Legend Entertainment/Allegro Films.
Cast:
Alexandra Paul (Detective Laura Underwood), Vlasta Vrana (Detective Dan McCartney), Michelle Johnson (Vicky Mayerson), Anthony Michael Hall (Brian Cutler), Andrew Simms (Detective Jimmy Jaworski), Edward Yankie (Ron Jeffers), Eric Davis (Scotty Flanagan), Emidio Macchetti (Sam Chandler), Rebecca Downey (Rose Chandler)
Plot: Philadelphia police detective Laura Underwood investigates a series of murders wherein the victims, all men, have been forced to step off rooftops. As she investigates, she realizes that all the men were all in the same class as her at school. The class is about to gather for its ten-year reunion. The woman behind the killings calls and begins to toy with Laura. Laura tries to discover the identity of the woman and stop her as she methodically kills the bullies who were responsible for her falling off a railway bridge years before.
This is a trashy Canadian-made thriller that vanished into the oblivion of direct-to-video and cable releases. The plot, concerning a driven cop who is drawn to identify with the killer – a woman who is avenging herself on the classmates who attacked her – is very similar to the darkly compulsive Cop (1987). Unfortunately, unlike Cop, Eternal Revenge suffers from a crucial blandness of heart. Cop was dark and driven while this is just dull. More to the point Eternal Revenge suffers from a moral weakness of chin. In Cop Lesley Ann Warren was avenging herself on a group of guys who raped her; here we find out that Michelle Johnson’s avenging woman wasn’t even really raped as we are led to believe, but that (with an astonishing blandness on the film’s part) the guys merely harassed her and in trying to get away she fell over a railway overbridge. It’s something that almost excuses them and makes Johnson’s character into someone who is clearly unbalanced. As a film it has a crucial dullness of spirit – there’s no anger to it. Indeed as a film it has nothing to say, all it is is just cliché.
It is also badly directed. Marc S. Greiner has no idea how to handle actors. There’s a completely laughable opening scene where Alexandra Paul’s detective goes into an apartment where wife Rebecca Downey is holding a gun on husband Emidio Macchetti for beating her, where Paul invokes the wife to kill the husband, then takes the gun and offers to do the job herself, shoots at him, deliberately misses and threatens to return and do the job properly if he does not behave. Any police officer that did such a thing would almost guaranteed being instantly suspended from the force. Former Baywatch (1989-2001) babe Alexandra Paul does not do a very good job of acting tough. Even worse Michelle Johnson, who seems to be appearing in a lot of Canadian films these days, has a really trashy role in the one-dimensional part of the avenging woman and plays quite campily. Like a number of Canadian films this has an identity crisis and is posing at being set in America – the location is mentioned as being Philadelphia and there are American flags littered in the background.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1999-2011
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