Synopsis
Fourth of July, Niagra Falls. TEENA MAGUIRE parties at her boyfriend
CASEY’S house, her twelve-year-old daughter BETHIE in tow. It gets late, and Casey is too
drunk to drive them home. Despite his protests, Teena insists on walking home with Bethie.
They cut through a park, where MARVIN and LLOYD PICK are smoking crystal meth with
their friends FRITZ and JIMMY. Marvin and the others ambush Teena and Bethie and drag them
to a boathouse.
They fight back, but it’s no use. The vile, repugnant men begin to overtake them – but Bethie
gets away and squirms into a narrow opening behind a stack of boats, where she is forced to
listen to her mother’s brutal rape.
Hours later, DETECTIVES ZWAFF and DROMOOR drive
through the park and see Bethie staggering out of the boathouse, mumbling about her mother.
They enter the boathouse, and find Teena nude, badly beaten. Clinging to life.
The doctors manage to save Teena. Under the watchful eye of AGNES, Teena’s mother, Bethie
identifies the assailants from file photos of known criminals in the area. Dromoor and Zwaff drag
Marvin, Lloyd and Fritz from their homes and take them to the police station, where Bethie
fights off her nerves and identifies all three in a line-up. It seems like an open and shut case.
Except it isn’t. IRMA PICK, the repulsive mother of Marvin and Lloyd, convinces their father
WALT to mortgage their house to hire JAY KIRKPATRICK, an oily, amoral defense attorney.
At a pre-trial hearing, Dromoor watches with disgust as Kirkpatrick destroys Teena’s reputation
and account of the attack. He advances an alternate theory of the crime, suggesting that Teena
approached the men offering sex for money, but tried to renegotiate the terms afterwards and
attacked the men. They defended themselves and left the scene, at which point a separate group
of men arrived and raped her. It’s a farfetched, crazy theory, but it intimidates Teena and causes
her to break down in the courtroom. And Bethie cannot corroborate her mom’s story, because
she was hiding at the time of the rape.
It appears the men will get away with their heinous crime. Agnes tells the prosecutor that Teena
won’t testify in court. Teena falls into a funk. A deep depression. Dromoor sees her out at a bar
one night and brings her home safely.
Overcome with anger over the events of July 4, Dromoor decides to take action.
Vengeance: A Love Story is a spellbinding thriller with an intense performance from Academy
Award Winner Nicolas Cage, under the expert direction of Harold Becker (Sea of Love, Malice).