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A gangster’s former girlfriend targets he and his associates when her sister goes missing, killing her way to the truth.

Director Nick Vallelonga uses a lot of B-level actors to good effect in Stiletto, which is a watchable tale of a sister’s revenge, even if it doesn’t exactly cover any new ground.

The film jumps right into the thick of things, as Raina (Stana Katic) targets and kills both her ex-lover Virgil (Tom Berenger) and his associate Ernesto during a meeting, or so we’re led to believe.  One of Virgil’s men, Lee (Michael Biehn) picks up the detective in charge of the case and takes him to Virgil’s home, where it’s revealed that he actually survived and is now gunning for Raina.  Virgil insists that Beck must find her before the police do, because he wants to learn why she’s killing his associates and what her grudge is with him.

Detective Beck (Paul Sloan) pursues the case while Virgil’s own men work it from their own perspective and Raina continues to kill random foot soldiers, including a neo-Nazi guy that she picks up on after following him on the street.  She receives a text message telling her that Virgil is still alive, which is obviously frustrating as she thought that was one loose end she’d already seen to.

Lee follows another plot thread, searching for a missing 2 million dollars and torturing Danny Boy (D.B. Sweeney), one of the only people to know where the money was stashed.  Danny Boy insinuates that perhaps Lee and Raina are in cahoots and have stolen the money, which drives Virgil to kill him in a fit of anger; he stalks away as his entourage does away with the evidence.

Raina meanwhile visits the rather pregnant Nancy (Dominique Swain), a friend who implores her to call off her mission of vengeance, saying that she wasn’t prepared for what Raina would do when she first tipped her off about ‘it’.  I guess we’re not meant to know what ‘it’ is quite yet, but the DVD sleeve synopsis has already told us that it involves her sister’s disappearance/kidnapping.

Raina continues to pile up more and more bodies as she works her way through most of Virgil’s criminal contacts and Ernesto’s crew shows up for some payback because they suspect that Virgil killed him instead of this phantom assassin he’s spoken about.  The ensuing shootout is pretty interesting, as are the various other conflicts that arise as Raina’s killings continue to cause conflict in the criminal world.

Like I said above, Stiletto doesn’t exactly break any new ground, and the ‘reveal’ of what happened to instigate all this bloody revenge doesn’t even happen until an hour and 15 minutes or so into the film, but it’s still an alright way to spend an hour and a half.

You get loads of B-level actors that you don’t see so much of these days, all in the same film! Hell, you even get William Forsythe doing a fairly silly thick foreign accent as Virgil’s brother Alex, so that’s something you don’t see every day.  While we never really learn how the hot Russian mistress went from being Virgil’s action on the side to this Elektra: Assassin-styled relentless killer that see during the course of the film, I suppose we don’t really need to know all the details to accept her plans for revenge, but a training montage might’ve been appreciated.
Stiletto comes to DVD courtesy of First Look Pictures on a bare bones disc that features only a handful of previews beyond the film itself.

The film was an okay watch, features some gory moments here or there, but ultimately isn’t anything I could see returning to again and again.  It’s worth a rental or a look on cable, as the cast does well with the material they’re given.

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