Virginia Madsen built her career around the roles of women who use their sex appeal in order to manipulate men and bring them to their doom. The character played by Virginia Madsen in Bitter Vengeance, 1994 television thriller by Stuart Cooper, is total opposite of such stereotype. Annie Westford is modest librarian married to Jack (played by Bruce Greenwood), former policeman who now works as security guard in the bank. The husband is far from being incarnation of marital virtue - he not only has an affair with co- worker, but also dreams of using his position and law enforcement experience to execute a perfect bank robbery. The carefully drawn plan works wonderfully for Jack - he escapes with stolen money and fakes his own death. For Annie, this is beginning of a nightmare - she just lost a husband, all her money and became prime suspect in the robbery.
The script, written by Pablo F. Fenjves, looked rather promising, offering few interesting twists to film noir formula - woman being manipulated by man instead of other way around. Unfortunately, director Stuart Cooper approached this material in the same way Soviet bureaucrats used to approach economic problems - by blindly following formulas and not caring if the thing didn't work. As a result, Bitter Vengeance suffers from inadequate pacing - in the beginning it is too slow, and the ending is too fast. Apart from Virginia Madsen who does her best in rather unusual role, and Bruce Greenwood (who would later become one of the more reliable character actors in Hollywood) as her husband, the acting is not particularly impressive. Because of that, Bitter Vengeance is a routine television product, not good enough to earn viewers' attention.
RATING: 4/10 (+)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on October 1st 2001)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/215240-bitter-vengeance?language=en-US
Critic: AA
