Depressed painter George Miller (Dennis Lipscomb) chucks himself off a hotel roof, his suicidal act most likely prompted by either his terrible haircut (I'd want to die too if I sported that style) or his complete lack of artistic talent. As medics bring him back from the brink of death, George is possessed by the vengeful spirit of gambler Vito Minelli (Mike Muscat), who was shot and burnt alive by the men to whom he was in debt.
Retribution could have been a fairly reasonable supernatural potboiler, but George Miller is such a dour, whiney loser that it makes for seriously hard going. I found myself increasingly irritated by the man's persistent hang-dog expression, so-much-so that I began to wish that the emergency team who revived him had been held up in traffic.
The film does deliver one or two reasonably well-executed scenes of violence - the brutal demise of Vito, the manager of an abattoir being cut up the middle by a circular saw, a guy having his hand removed with an acetylene torch - and there is an impressive sense of style throughout, director Guy Magar making particularly good use of colour and lighting. However, the unbearable protagonist and an overlong runtime of 107 minutes means that the film as a whole is far from great.
Retribution could have been a fairly reasonable supernatural potboiler, but George Miller is such a dour, whiney loser that it makes for seriously hard going. I found myself increasingly irritated by the man's persistent hang-dog expression, so-much-so that I began to wish that the emergency team who revived him had been held up in traffic.
The film does deliver one or two reasonably well-executed scenes of violence - the brutal demise of Vito, the manager of an abattoir being cut up the middle by a circular saw, a guy having his hand removed with an acetylene torch - and there is an impressive sense of style throughout, director Guy Magar making particularly good use of colour and lighting. However, the unbearable protagonist and an overlong runtime of 107 minutes means that the film as a whole is far from great.