"Retaliation" offers Orlando Bloom's career-best performance in a searing drama

Retaliation (2020)
93 min., rated R.
Release Date: July 24, 2020 (Digital & On Demand)

Shot as “Romans” back in late 2015, “Retaliation” is an absorbing but austere and uncompromisingly pensive capital-D drama. Not to be confused with a revenge exploitationer, directors Ludwig Shammasian and Paul Shammasian’s film is more of an intensely measured character drama about unspoken trauma and how to (or not how to) rise from it. So much is internalized, particularly in the career-best lead performance by heretofore-untapped Orlando Bloom, that the film could be faulted for being ponderous at times and heavy on the monologues. Nevertheless, for those who don’t mind being challenged or provoked, “Retaliation” is searing and thoughtful.

Orlando Bloom (2014’s “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies”) acts the hell out of his role and gives his bravest, most nuanced performance as Malky, a demolition man who knocks down churches for a living. Brooding and short-tempered, he has trouble coping with heavy trauma, carrying himself with shame and confusion like the cross he hoists on his back from the church being demolished. Malky is triggered when he sees a man from his past, a parish priest (James Simillie) who sexually abused him twenty-five years ago and returning to lead the town’s church. Since Malky doesn’t let anyone in on what haunts him—not his barmaid girlfriend (Janet Montgomery) and not his ailing mother (Anne Reid)—he becomes violent and destructive to find some sort of salvation. 

Written by Geoff Thompson, “Retaliation” is based on the screenwriter’s personal experience as a survivor of sexual abuse. Such subject matter makes for a somber picture, but the emotional toll it takes on Malky is so vividly and sensitively handled by the Shammasian brothers. Stephen Hilton’s score aids in the tension, being as dread-inducing as Disasterpiece’s masterwork in the 2015 horror film “It Follows.” The reverberations of Malky’s abuse and demons almost recall the martyrdom in 2018’s “First Reformed,” Paul Schrader’s unshakable meditation on faith, building to a joltingly unsparing climax. Like that late moment of preservation, all of “Retaliation” is pretty staggering.

Grade: B