Sadly Over-hyped

I gave it a 7.5 out of 10

One of the best movies of the year! Incredible from the beginning to the end.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

'Bound to vengeance' is one of those movies that begins to loose steam while you approach half way in to the middle. Which is the reason I had fallen asleep for a couple of minutes when I first saw it last year. However I had another opportunity and decided to give it my full attention. I will be honest and say that I actually enjoyed it. Although I wished that there was more meat to the bone. This is a small independent movie that had a limited theatrical release. The film is about a woman who frees herself from her captor after being held hostage in a basement for almost 6 months. Instead of going to the police she decides to take matters in to her own hands and use the captor to lead her to set free other women who are in similar circumstances. This forms the basis for three quarters of the film's running time. On the script level it falls short on story development. I often wondered why there could not be more to the plot. The film reminded me of a 2012 movie I saw named 'Eden' starring Jamie Chung, which had a similar theme and also focused on the sex trafficking theme in greater detail. But I would assume the script writer chose to take an alternate approach. Tina Ivlev is the soul of the movie. Her acting, emotions and expressions are on the mark and gets under the skin of the character realistically. She carries the entire movie on her shoulders and breathes air in to a weak script. No pun intended but I'm not sure why she was held hostage for 6 months. Was she waiting her turn? And how did she learn to fire a gun so fast?. Possibly she had practised before? Personally I wouldn't see the film more than once, in spite the fact I enjoyed it. But the surprise ending makes it worthwhile to get through to the end.

Rather simple story line but this time it do works out fine due a few reasons. The way it was acted did work as did the effects used. Most of the effects are done off-camera but they are never that cruel that you are missing the impact, what we do see is how the result is on the bodies. In other words, a low budget flick has to hide the fact that there isn't that much of money. Still, it do has a rather brutal overlook because when the abducted girl is taking her revenge it's without mercy. Even as some things are done off-camera it do has a few gory moments like the scene with the spikes or the shot through the head.Maybe it's all a bit exaggerated with the way all those girls are abducted but somehow it didn't bother me at all. A surprisingly good horror flick, as seen a thousand times before with all that revenge revival but clocking in at around 80 minutes is what makes it work too.Gore 1/5 Nudity 0/5 Effects 2,5/5 Story 2,5/5 Comedy 0/5

What COULD have been a decent movie was entirely ruined purely by sloppy writing. Nuts and bolts wise it had enough going for it to be a decent and entertaining Indy type flick...could even have become a cult classic if there were not SO many entirely needless unrealistic components to the script! All that was needed was anyone with a GOOD imagination so that what was transpiring MADE SENSE! And particularly an ending that didn't leave a viewer (like me for instance) shaking his head in disbelief that a MORON was allowed to RUIN all the good effort that went into the film! Whoever botched this all up and I would have to think HAD to have ignored suggestions to fix it, richly deserves to be taken and tortured as much as us viewers have collectively been! GRRRRR! Or for all I know maybe some moron holding the purse strings got his or her mitts into into it...but SOMEONE really REALLY screwed this film up righteously!

Saw this at the IMAGINE film festival 2015 in Amsterdam. To present my end conclusion upfront: I left disappointed. The very original plot elements could have made this film stand apart from others in the genre, where usually men are the ones in control and the women suffer. Plus that none of the rescued women thanked her, was a novel plot element too. But it could have been so much better, given all these ingredients.The core of the story, that Eve did not get the thanks she really deserved, is very clear, overly clear in fact along the remainder of the story after having freed herself. Even worse, all her well-intended actions to set the other captured women free, backfire one after another. If she had decided to be selfish, it would have prevented all the fallout we saw now, all pointing to her as the aggressor and guilty party as soon as law enforcement would get involved. In other words, if she had not gone to the trouble of rescuing all the others that were held captured, she could have lived happily ever after. I hope not to have read a morale between the lines here, nor a takeaway message.As a side note, I was particularly annoyed by the repetitious flashbacks with more or less the same images over and over again, showing Eve on a fun-fair with her boyfriend having a good time together. Along the story we get hints that the boyfriend played an unclear role, maybe not directly responsible for her abduction, but got heavily involved in that line of business later on. He insists, on the other hand, that he has searched her for half a year, and lost his job and house in the process. The fine details of what he precisely did (or not did) are not revealed to us. Could have been interesting, but this plot element was dearly missed too.