Leofwine_draca DEATH AND VENGEANCE is another Jack Reed TV movie featuring star Brian Dennehy, who also wrote and directed the thing. I've seen three of these now and DEATH AND VENGEANCE is by far the best of the trio, a film which overcomes the trappings of the TV movie experience and the lack of budget to deliver a surprisingly deep and meaningful story.Sure, the budget is low and the action scenes hardly impress, but story always trumps action and in this respect the film delivers. The movie features two plot strands and both are equally interesting. The first has decade regular Joe Morton playing a political candidate whose drunken son accidentally kills a woman while driving one night; his powerful allies attempt to get the kid off scot-free. The second has some Russian immigrant brothers causing havoc in the city by bumping off various criminal rivals.Brian Dennehy holds the whole thing together as usual but the heart of this film belongs to the excellent Charles S. Dutton whose scenes with Morton are very finely staged. The film has plenty of interesting ingredients from the feisty female victim who employs some STRAW DOGS-style home defence to the feral gang of kids who enjoy violence for kicks. Of the supporting cast members, Peter Outerbridge looks like a young Peter O'Toole and has the gravitas to match, and old-timer Anthony Zerbe is here too. For a TV movie from the 1990s, this is very good indeed.

Prismark10 Brian Dennehy became something of a cult actor with turns in films such as First Blood, FX, Belly of an architect. Here he directs, co-writes and stars in this made for TV film which is the last in the series of Jack Reed films that Dennehy starred in.The plot concerns a Russian gangster type killing people in a cemetery and raising his own street gang. Other Russian immigrants are scared to complain because they know the police will not take them seriously.As with this type of film there is a B plot involving the son of a mayoral candidate involved in a homicide and so pressure is brought on to the police force to make the investigation go away.This is the first Jack Reed film I have seen and I can only say that I hope this was atypical of the previous films because Dennehy should stick to acting and not writing or directing.This is lame stuff, badly written, poorly plotted and some bad acting which wastes some of the talent on the screen. Just look at the way the gangster escapes when he is surrounded by police with all sorts of weapons and who put down their guns before the gangster puts his down. Just bad.

tonyalles I love the jack reed films. Brian directed this one and he did a great job. The acting is great and Charles s Dutton is great with some very intense scenes with his character and the politicians battling with each other. and his character give a very good supporting role to the jack reed character The script is well written and the film moves at a good pace. Having two strong story lines running through the film sets it apart from a lot of other TV made cop thrillers. The jack reed character is just the sort of cop you would want to protect your family if you were under threat, honest to the hilt and never backs down from a problem. They should have made more of the jack reed films as they were and still are very popular I would recommend this film as a very good cop film.

Chris Quigley Brian Dennehey tries his hand at directing in this one. Unfortunatley for him, the film is another cliche-ridden cop drama which doesn't show anything that we have not seen before. A poor script, poor acting and an apparently low budget, theres nothing much good to say about this film. Lets hope this is the last of the Jack Reed series.