Don't listen to the negative reviews

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

You can see it is a television movie. There is not much quality to it. They didn't put a lot of effort making this movie. Maybe with a higher budget the movie could have been better. You could do something decent with the story, even though it's one of those typical I'm-a-good-guy-with-a-conscience-and-take-all-the-bad-guys-down-by-myself. It's a revenge action movie, but one without a budget, and I'm sorry to say not great acting. Sam Elliott has been better in other movies but in this one it's all cliché and average. It's clearly been made to entertain a television public on a rainy day. It's watchable but that's about it. I would rather pick another movie if you haven't seen this one. I'm sure you can find better without having to search too far.

Calvin Dexter, a lawyer, is a man whose life has been marked by tragedy. When his only daughter is killed by a greasy boyfriend, he leaps into action. Cal doesn't wait for justice, he deals with the injustices committed against him. He is a Viet Nam veteran, part of a special force, that were trained for risky missions. As such, he has had the experience to deal with whatever comes his way.When Senator Stephen Edwards asks him to look into the disappearance of his son in Bosnia, where the young man has gone on a humanitarian mission, he finds that the man who was responsible for what happened to the boy is no other than the evil Zoran Zilic, a sanguinary man, responsible for much of the atrocities during the war in that part of the world.Cal decides to track down this paid assassin, but little does he know our own government is involved in the usage and protection of this scum bag, now hiding in South Africa. CIA director, Paul Devereaux, upon knowing how Dexter has found out about the war criminal, sends his henchman Frank McBride to eliminate Cal Dexter for him. Little does this corrupt government official realize the former Viet Nam veteran is ahead of all the evil forces and how he will avenge the murdered youth.The film, which was made for television, is based on a Frederick Forsyth novel. Director Robert Markowitz, working on the screen treatment by Alan Sharp delivers a taut action movie. This is by no means an original story, as we have seen before how corrupt public servants can be behind vile acts of violence in the name of democracy."Avenger" was tailor-made for Sam Elliott. His Cal Dexter shows this actor at his best. We have always thought Mr. Elliott was a great character actor that could have been given more opportunities in which to shine. This film seems to prove he can deliver. James Cromwell plays the heartless director of the CIA with verve. Timothy Hutton is seen as the gofer for the head of the spy agency. David Hyman appears as Zilic.This television movie is action filled for fans of this movie genre.

This is when you boil it down, a story about conscience. Conscience being pulled this way and that by the conflicting poles of revenge and justice. If you like Sam Elliott's work and I do, you will very much enjoy this spy story. The story is not overwhelmingly original but the way the steps unfold, I stayed intrigued by it all the way. The assembly of details and camera style and the music all very high quality choices. "Cal Dexter" has more complexity than many similar characters of this genre. Timothy Hutton does a lot with little dialog. Lucy Russell was attention grabbing in a small part. I look forward to seeing more of her work. I liked the settings (South Africa in particular) and the overall visual style.

After seeing the promos for this TV movie, I set aside a night with my youngest son to watch one of my favorite dark actors. Sam Elliot has always fascinated me, from his westerns to his Road House depictions of tough, veteran, leave-me-alone, but-if-you-mess-with-me-you-are-dead-meat types of guys. However, after about an hour of this movie, in its disjointed, unexplained and unfinished scenes, shallow depictions of characters and general lack of creativity and freshness, I said to my son, well, you can leave if you want to. He said no, he wanted to see how bad it was going to get. And it got pretty bad. There were several times during the movie when I said, well, why did he do that. For example, if he was already near the hideout of the bad guy, why did he come back to madame wongs and then have to sneak his way back into the country again. And where were the guns delivered? And did he ever find out the pilot was knifed by the bad guys.There is just so much about this movie that is poor that it is impossible to list all them. Poor plot, poor action photography, poor buildup, poor character development, poor timeline continuity. And the list goes on. Poor Sam, he probably had no idea how bad it was since all the individual scenes seem to be focused. But maybe a lot of the continuity scenes are still on the cutting room floor. I mean, really, who are those two guys that are waiting for him in his hotel room???Maybe it was cut down for TV. Or maybe I should have read the book so I would have known what was going on.