Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

A Vigilante Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 14, 2019

Olivia Wilde certainly lives up to the homonym of her surname by delivering a hugely energetic performance in A Vigilante, a film which might be thought of as a revenge fantasy for the #metoo movement. Wilde portrays Sadie, a woman whose mission in life is to bring a sense of justice to abused females (in most cases, more about which in a moment), often by delivering a series of knock down, drag out punishments to whatever misbehaving males are involved. There’s a structural gambit at play in A Vigilante which is completely understandable, but which may arguably be too discursive, at least initially, to deliver the emotional underpinning the film is so obviously aiming to provide. That conceit involves some ping ponging of timeframes to slow dole out information about Sadie herself, when the film might at first seem to simply be a vignette driven enterprise documenting Sadie’s marauding through a series of miscreants to give them more than a bit of comeuppance. The problem with this “back and forth” is that it ultimately uncovers a past for Sadie which many, maybe even most, viewers will have already intuited in its broad outlines if not in its horrifying particulars.

In a way, Sadie is kind of introduced as a nameless avenger, shown donning a disguise (a plot element that ultimately doesn’t make a whale of a lot of sense) before arriving at the house of an abused wife. Some of the choices writer and director Sarah Dagger-Nickson makes throughout the film, and particularly with regard to some of the “action” elements, are fascinating, and they’re on display from the get go in this first sequence. First of all, Dagger-Nickson’s camera lingers on the abused woman as she cooks in the kitchen (replete with her arm in a sling, obviously the result of having been beaten), even as Sadie informs the woman’s husband that his life is about to change in a very dramatic way. This hulking boor isn’t about to take any guff from a “mere” woman, and appears ready to fight, until a quick move by Sadie completely debilitates him. Then, in another interesting elision, the film skips over the beatdown to show the guy bloodied and bruised following the “directions” Sadie had given him before any physical contact occurred.

When the film then segues to the first of several “support group” meetings, it’s initially a bit disjunctive, though it finally is clarified that these are flashbacks documenting Sadie’s transformation from an abused woman herself to an avenging angel of sorts. Parts of these sequences frankly feel more than a bit exploitative, and Sadie’s own story is arguably so over the top as to rob the film at least temporarily of a feeling of authenticity, but Wilde delivers a really anguished performance in these (and other) scenes that tends to anchor the film in some sort of emotional verisimilitude.

There are some curious detours the film takes, though. One of these involves an abusive woman who is terrorizing her children, a sequence that is weirdly sweet in its own demented way (the little boy Sadie “rescues” is an obviously inherently sympathetic character), and while there’s a certain “gender equity” in the scene, it also feels a little out of place in the overall “abused female” scenario. The other potential downfall some folks may feel the film has is in a completely hyperbolic third act where Sadie decides to go after her abusive husband, who is a kind of Ted Kaczynski-esque “off the grid” type. Morgan Spector is given the unenviable task of personifying a character with absolutely no redeeming moral values whatsoever, and one whose supposed “pain” seems at least a bit artificial. Still, the film builds to a satisfying conclusion, though its more or less “happy” ending may belie the emotional trauma it has taken so much time to detail.

Note: My colleague Brian Orndorf didn't like A Vigilante quite as much as I did. You can read Brian's thoughts here.

A Vigilante Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A Vigilante is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.84:1. This is another outing where I haven't been able to track down much technical data, though there are some hashtags out there in cyberspace that suggest this may have been another Arri Alexa captured film, which I'm assuming was finished at a 2K DI. Detail levels are quite impressive throughout this presentation, especially since Dagger-Nickson and cinematographer Andrew McIntyre Smith favor so many extreme close-ups. Some of the fine detail on injuries will probably be squirm inducing for some. There's some fairly heavy grading going on at times, especially in the third act, much of which takes place in ice cool blue tones due to a wintry setting. In fact a lot of the film tends to play out in a somewhat bleak palette. As tends to be the case with some digital captures, some of the dimly lit interior scenes and/or outdoor sequences shot at night can have somewhat less fulsome shadow detail, but on the whole, this is a great looking transfer without any significant compression issues.

A Vigilante Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

A Vigilante features a decently immersive DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track, though those expecting a "traditional" action-adventure soundscape may be disappointed, since a lot of the film plays out in relatively restrained dialogue scenes. Interestingly, there are also very long swaths of the film that don't have one word of dialogue (especially in the third half hour or so), though there is good attention paid to well placed ambient environmental effects. All elements are rendered with excellent fidelity and no problems whatsoever.

A Vigilante Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Catharis: Creating A Vigilante (1080p; 17:43) is an above average EPK with some good interviews.

A Vigilante Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The good folks at Lionsgate Films continue to baffle me at times with their "strategy" vis a vis their various home media releases. I've been on record repeatedly in head scratching mode over their selections for 4K UHD material, and their support (or lack thereof) of some individual releases on good "old fashioned" 1080p Blu-ray continues to mystify me, at least in passing. They will often promote straight to video (or close to it) fare and routinely send out review copies, and then let something rather unique and even provocative like this go unnoticed. A Vigilante isn't a perfect film by any means, and I personally think it would have benefited from a less melodramatic third act (even if that third act does provide a much needed catharsis). Wilde is a force of nature in this film, and even those who probably wisely feel they may not have the stomach for the subject matter at hand may want to check out the film for her performance alone. Technical merits are generally solid, and with caveats duly noted, A Vigilante comes Recommended.