REVIEW: BOUND TO VENGEANCE (2015)

BOUND TO VENGEANCE (2015)

(Remember, clicking the highlighted links brings you to other reviews and articles here at The Movie Madhouse!)

Bound To Vengeance is a vicious and intense revenge thriller with a powder keg of a leading lady. Pretty young Eve (Tina Ivlev) has been kidnaped, held and abused for six months by creepy Phil (Richard Tyson) and his associates. One day she escapes and turns the tables, chaining Phil up in the very dungeon he’s kept her in. Rummaging through Phil’s desert house, she finds evidence that he has other girl’s imprisoned elsewhere. Now Eve takes Phil hostage on a road trip to rescue the other girls, but discovers something far worse than she ever imagined…including a path to bloodthirsty vengeance that she may never be able to turn back from.

This is a nasty little thriller as directed by Jose Manuel Cravioto from a script by Rock Shaink Jr. and Keith Kjornes. The narrative begins with Eve’s daring escape and violently taking control of her former captor, then let’s us get to know the sweet girl before her abduction and what happened to her during her time with Phil, with flashbacks inter-spliced throughout the story. This gradually let’s us see how the pretty young girl transformed into the calculated and cold blooded angel of revenge that we are now watching…a girl capable of some vicious acts of violence against Phil and his associates. The script also has some fairly shocking surprises for us and an interesting look at how the abduction and mistreatment of these young women effected them differently. Not all of them are happy to see Eve. Obviously there is also some disturbing violence as Eve vents her rage against what appears to be an increasingly large network of creeps that Phil works amongst. There is a much larger picture here than just a perv shopping for young girls and we discover it as does Eve. It’s an intense and blood-spattered road to revenge led by a really powerful turn by our heroine…a heroine forever changed and not necessarily for the best.

To say that Tina Ivlev is a pure stick of dynamite in this flick is an understatement. We see a young woman strengthened by her abduction and abuse to the point of viciously delivering payback to those responsible. We see a sweet and energetic young woman filled with vitality and dreams in the flashbacks of footage, with her sister and boyfriend, then return to the present narrative as this sweet girl wields guns, bricks and various tools with equal brutality and lethality…and Ivlev gives her that sweetness and rage in equally effective doses. This actress has major potential. Tyson is perfectly creepy as Phil and even, at times, gets us to feel a little sorry for him as he is a small cog in a disturbingly bigger wheel, yet bares the brunt of much of Eve’s anger. He deserves it, no question, but Tyson gives him some depth…especially when Eve’s vengeance gets shockingly personal.

This film took me quite by surprise. I was expecting something fairly routine, but got something far more layered and with some truly disturbing surprises. We watch a sweet girl transformed into a calculated killer who has no problem viciously dispatching those who have wronged her and other young women. It’s a brutal and blood-soaked ride, where the evil that men do transforms one of their intended victims into the object of their own comeuppance. Recommend, but be warned, it is a nasty little flick. Also stars Bianca Malinowski as ‘Lea’ another captive Eve rescues.

-MonsterZero NJ

  Rated 3 and 1/2 (out of 4) bullets.

 

 

 

 

**************************************************