Film Review THE Revenger’s Tragedy

FILM REVIEW – THE REVENGER’S TRAGEDY 2002 Exterminating Angel films. An Alex Cox film based on the 1606 Thomas Middleton Jacobean tragedy, transplanting the drama to a post-apocalyptic Liverpool. The future it is set in is this year, 2011. The film mixes the original text and modern street language almost seamlessly. It’s a startling, highly original macabre comedy, as dripping in blood as Sweeney Todd. Derek Jacobi, as The Duke, has murdered and then raped Christopher (Dr. Who) Ecclestone’s wife on their wedding day, poisoning her and the other guests. Ecclestone survived, fled and returns now, years later to seek revenge. Deranged enough to carry his wife’s skull and chat with it (shades of Hamlet & Yorrick), Ecclestone ingratiates himself in with Jacobi’s son and heir, played beautifully by Eddie Izzard, who has his own agenda and lust for power. With much confusion of identity, Jacobi trying to kill off Izzard but accidentally causing the death of his younger son instead, things reach fever pitch when Ecclestone finally gets his revenge, with the dead wife getting to deliver a very fatal kiss with poisoned lips. Now Izzard is in power, proving to be as evil as his Father, so Ecclestone decides he must go too, resulting in a grand scale blood bath shoot out and knifing war in the duke’s palace.   Produced by the director who gave us Repo Man and Sid & Nancy, this is a film of unforgettable power. From Ecclestone’s surreal arrival on a bus filled with corpses, his doomed state is very obvious throughout. He’s dead from the very conception of his plot but fails to see it. The execution of the Duke is brutal, involving drugs given to ensure he can’t so much as blink to avoid his fate. A film that deserved greater attention than it received. None of the characters are likeable, least of all the Duke and the revenger, Vindice (Vindictive one) who even destroys his own family to get closer to the Duke. The film referenced on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revengers_Tragedy And on the International Movie Database http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286921/

Arthur Chappell