Law & Order (TV Series) Vendetta (2004) User Reviews

V for vendetta

[TheLittleSongbird · 7/10 · 8 July 2022]

'Law and Order' was a brilliant show in its prime and overall is actually my favourite of the 'Law and Order' franchise and out of it, 'Special Victims Unit' (the longest running) and 'Criminal Intent'. Despite not feeling the same post-Briscoe. 'Special Victims Unit' started off brilliantly, but became hit and miss Season 7 onwards and has not lived up to the early seasons generally for a long time. 'Criminal Intent' also was truly fine in its early seasons, but became wildly inconsistent mid-run.

"Vendetta" for me is not one of the best 'Law and Order' episodes or even one of the best of Season 14, which on the whole was re-watching it recently is very solid. It is still a good if uneven episode, that has a lot to like with the best things being great but also a few frustrations that could have been avoided. Really did like the idea for "Vendetta" and there was a great outing in there somewhere that doesn't quite make it.

Beginning with what could have been better, "Vendetta" did feel rather incomplete. Some of the storytelling was on the rushed and jumpy side and the resolution is not much of one. The victim is also very underdeveloped.

Elisabeth Rohm continues to be stiff and emotionless.

However, a lot works. The production values are slick and have a subtle grit, with an intimacy to the photography without being too claustrophobic. The music isn't used too much and doesn't get too melodramatic. The direction is sympathetic but also alert. The acting is very good from almost everyone, David Warsofsky plays an interesting character with conviction and Sam Waterston stands out particularly here of the regulars.

Writing is very thought-provoking and felt real. It is also taut, intelligent and well balanced, and while the story is a long way from perfect it does engross and doesn't come over as obvious. The legal portion has the right amount of tension.

Overall, pretty good but not great. 7/10.

I had to make it right. I had to balance the scales.

[Mrpalli77 · 7/10 · 8 December 2017]

At a local bar, a man smashed a liquor bottle over a customer, killing him as a result. The killer wasn't a regular in the pub, so no one recognized him. Indeed the victim was well-known in the Big Apple for having caught a foul ball in a Yankee game that cost the team an entire season. Detectives started looking on Yankee fans: some had even set up a website against him. Forensics needed some time to examine the fingerprints; at the end the prints were in the system, matching to an inmate (David Warshofsky) who had just been released after twenty years in prison. He had no reason to kill the man: it had just been a reaction for having spent jail time for a murder he didn't commit (thanks to new technology there were proofs he was innocent). At the time, all was made up by a detectives (former partner of Green) who has held a grudge against him since the inmate boyhood. McCoy decided to prosecute the killer for another juvenile crime, trying to prove his criminal behavior.

This episode showed us a detective acting as a vigilante in order to make peace with himself. Anyway in the past when the DNA tests were not so accurate, this situation occurred frequently and abuse of power was easier than now.

Framed

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 16 September 2020]

An old friend of Jesse Martin's, fellow detective John Michael Bolger gets himself in a real jackpot, Turns out he framed David Warsofsky for a murder he didn't commit with evidence of for one Warshofsky did commit. I won't explain it that would give the whole story away.

When Warshofsky is arrested for the right murder it's one big legal tangle for the District Attorney's offivce, Giancarlo Esposito as Warshofky's attorney who got him sprung on the first murder is also similarly perplexed.

Bolger's career as a cop is circling the bowl. No doubt he framed Warshofsky, but he and all police are human.

You have to see how this one comes out.

Mostly satisfying but grossly incomplete.

[qordil · 5/10 · 9 June 2020]

A quote from one of the characters, Detective Daniels:

Kenneth Daniels: "Why not? Grimes was guilty. He was a murderer! He was gonna walk on the murder of Julie Sayer. He was gonna walk because of me! It was eating me up, Ed. I had to make it right. I had to balance the scales."

Sure, pal, however, no one has been investigated for the murder of Leanne Testa and from the ending shown it does not seem that anyone ever will be. That's the trouble with jailing the "Bad Guys" for things you manage to get them for but not for things they actually did, Justice gets forgotten in the rush to commit vengeance.

It rather surprised me that none of the writers thought to have any of the "Good Guy" main characters, McCoy, Greene or even Brisco mention the Ms. Testa injustice or that her killer is most probably still walking around freely. It also bothers me.

I know that even in the fictional world of "Law and Order" sometimes justice is not achieved, sometimes the "Bad Guys" win, sometimes the forces of law and order lose but to simply forget about Ms. Testa seems a little callous.

It would have taken all of two or three seconds to mention her but she got lost in the fog of "war".

It is sad. "L&O" usually does better with the victims.

Sing Sing: Not A Rose Garden.

[rmax304823 · 10 October 2011]

A man recently released from the pen after many years bashes another guy's head in during a bar room brawl. His lawyer -- a kind of Barry Schenk -- claims that if the killer hadn't spent so much time in the slams he wouldn't have developed this violent reflex.

The case gets complicated when it develops that the defendant was framed for the earlier crime by a cop who wanted to see justice done. In other words, the defendant seems guilty of the murder only because he was unjustly sent up the river years earlier. Survival in Sing Sing depends on the ability to quickly defend one's self without thinking. Therefore, how can it be his fault? It's an interesting question. The writers weasel out of answering it by exposing the defendant's history of violence prior to his conviction for the earlier crime. In fact, they pin the guilt on him for a pre-pen murder.

It would be more interesting if the guy's pre-Sing Sing past had been pristine, but it would have been a tougher job for the writers to handle, with no satisfyingly neat ending in the offing.

The writers probably didn't know this but social psychologists studying what's called "personal space" -- that is, the invisible sheath around our bodies that we consider our own territory -- is larger in prison inmates than among civilians. If anyone wants to bother looking up this study of the "body buffer zone", the author is A. F. Kinzel and the article appeared in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1970.

The cop who framed the defendant would be an interesting subject for a story himself, but I won't get into it here.

One crime that was never investigated, another that was never prosecuted

[susanhathaway · 4/10 · 16 February 2024]

Walter Grimes was framed for Leanne Testa's murder, but no mention is ever made of any search for the real killer. Also, Detective Daniels finally admits to having tortured Grimes to get his false confession, but he's never prosecuted for torture (apparently, torture is prosecutable *only* in connection with another crime, like kidnapping, rape, or murder) or even for obstruction of justice. It makes for a highly unsatisfying episode. The Daniels character also has a number of rants about "making things right" by framing Grimes for one murder because he couldn't convict him of another, but, again, no one ever mentions the murderer he let get away by never troubling himself to look for who really killed Leanne Testa.