NateWatchesCoolMovies Stiletto is a brash, ballsy love letter to schit kicking, macho 80' action flicks that fires on booze soaked, bullet ridden cylinders to bring us a pulpy tale of evil gangsters, bent cops, sleazy criminals and the deadly Eastern European femme fatale that ties them all together in the web of violence, corruption and vengeance they have stirred up. They have also stirred up her fury as well, and she descends upon them one by with the forces of hell, and the titular stiletto blade, which gets rammed, sliced and slashed across many a deserving limb or neck. Her name is Raina, and she's portrayed by underrated vixen Stana Katic, who most will know from the TV show Castle, or 24. She's got charisma to spare, and gives the classic female assassin role a careful depth and smouldering hurt that fuels her bloody rampage and gives her brutality a justified edge. The rest of the cast is dominated by the dudes, and director Nick Vallellonga lovingly peppers his roster with an unbelievable handful of iconic 80's and 90's action stars. No throwaway cameos here either; each one is given a fleshed out, memorable slice of noirish material to chomp down on, and each one creates a delightfully nasty rogue to add to their gallery of characters. Raina used to be the the moll of shady Greek mobster Virgil Vadalos (Tom Berenger, drenched in tan lotion, adorned with chains and growling like a disgruntled bulldog. Great work). He has betrayed her in some unforgivable way, unbeknownst to the audience. She near fatally wounds him, and he goes into hiding, sending a corrupt detective (Paul Sloan) and two of his trusted enforcers to flush her out and bring her to him. William Forsythe, in all his sarcastic, blustering glory, plays slick Alex, a cunning Russian thug with more up his sleeve than is laid back personality may suggest. Michael Biehn, in my favourite performance of the film, plays Lee, a psychopathic hothead with a live wire British girlfriend (Amanda Brooks on overdrive) and a penchant for extreme interrogation techniques (there's a scene involving D.B. Sweeney and an electric sander that will make you cringe). Biehn has a colourful career playing energetic live wires, and this is no slouch. He's a happily violent, unapologetically profane, contemptible prick, and lights up the screen with fabulous nihilistic energy. Raina also gets tangled up with other lowlifes and associates in her search for retribution, including scummy night clubbing Tom Sizemore, and the leader of a neo nazi skinhead biker clan played with scary, coked up rage by veteran thespian James Russo, making a limited appearance count by flooding the screen with violent threats and intense glowering. There's also great work from gorgeous Kelly Hu as another cop, Diane Venora from Heat as Berenger's long suffering wife, and underrated Dominique Swain as well. People will undoubtedly whine about misogyny with this one, and hell I wouldn't disagree with them. The male characters are a scary bunch of amoral, bottom feeding motherf____ers who don't think twice about the kind of trauma they inflict on girls. But you know what? Welcome to the real world, where things like that exist, and are reflected in artistic expression, like movies. It's present in the story here, and although necessarily dwelled upon, as dictated by the genre, it's never glorified, however ugly it gets. That's not to say it's completely in bad taste. Hell, the narrative is about one single woman carving a swath of carnage through the men that committed atrocities against her. So there. There's sympathy and feeling to it as well, albeit briefly, as the flashback sequence where we see what happened to her (I won't spoil anything) is handled with care and given space for it to really hit us. That being said, the majority of the movie is an excessively violent, over the top, near cartoonish homage to the hard boiled crime genre. And I'm not kidding about the violence. Some of the damage inflicted rivals anything that you'd see in a Saw movie, and will leave some gagging. But I'd expect nothing less from a film that attempts this kind of 'feel'. Go all the way, or don't even bother trying, I say. There's some nice twists as well, some real thought put into the deceptions, betrayals and arcs of these characters. Katic anchors it like a streamlined feline of righteous anger and uses her natural dark beauty as a deceptive ruse to lure the hard bitten scumbags orbiting her to their certain deaths at the hands of her skill, training and pure hatred. Anyone looking for a down and dirty, bloody bit of vengeful crime fun that makes Kill Bill look mild in comparison owes it to themselves to give this one a try.

kosmasp Seeing the cast list for this, is almost like a "who-is-who" of a lot of known bit part players from the 80s! Really good actors too. If I'd started listing them IMDb would tell me, that I have no more room to write an actual review. Suffice to say, that whether you know those people or not, they do deliver.Whose not fully delivering, is Katic! Which is a shame, because her role is the crucial one. And while I love looking at her (even while or when does horrible things), I have to admit, that she cannot carry this movie as she should. The action on the other hand is nicely filmed, the plot/story is decent enough too. With a better lead, this could've been a winner! As it stands, it just is above average (and still cut by a lot of minutes in Germany, a version I refused to watch, so the rating and review goes for the uncut version)

dukevega This movie suffers from two problems: the cast is too big and if you don't read the back of the cover, you have no idea why Stana Katic ("Castle") is carving up people with an edged weapon that is too big to be a knife and too small to be a sword.In a movie this long, you need to focus on the protagonist, the antagonist and the world they live in; everything else just bogs down the story. And in a revenge movie, you need to know why the protagonist is going after people, otherwise it makes it difficult for the audience to root for her.What saves this movie is a nice little twist at the end and the character of a cop working for the mob; he almost becomes the protagonist because you get to know him a little and sense that while he may be working for the mob, he is not dirty.All in all, barely worth the price of a rental, but I will keep an eye on the writer--he shows some potential.Note to the Publicity Department: If you're going to name a movie "Stiletto" and the cover is going to feature an armed woman, she should probably be holding the weapon rather than a pair of guns.

merklekranz This ultra violent female revenge film does not reveal the motivation for all of Stana Katric's carnage until it's almost over, so what precedes the revelation seems like random nonsense. If you are into this for the cast, beware that Tom Berenger is corpulent with dyed blonde hair. Tom Sizemore actually gives the best performance, expounding priceless dialect inside a strip joint, but his part is small. The movie has many problems, confusing and meaningless script, mostly bad acting, and zero likable characters. The ending is especially weak and a ridiculous conclusion to everything that precedes it. Very definitely, a movie to be avoided. - MERK