Revanche

Directed by Götz Spielmann

Not Rated

2008 2h 1mCrime, Drama,

7.596%83%7.1

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Alex, an ex-con working as muscle in a Vienna brothel, dreams of escaping with his girlfriend Tamara, who also works there. Their attempt to break free sets off a chain of events that links their fate with a rural police officer and his troubled marriage. As their lives intersect, a quiet struggle unfolds between guilt, grief, and the desire for redemption.

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Cast of Revanche

Johannes KrischAlex
Irina PotapenkoTamara
Andreas LustRobert
Ursula StraussSusanne
Hanno PöschlKonecny
Johannes ThanheiserHausner
Linde PrelogRobert's mother
Michael-Joachim HeissTagportier
Rainer GradischnigHarry
Toni SlamaCustomer
Johannes ZeilerPolice officer
Max SchmiedlPolice officer
Magdalena KropiunigProstitute
Nicoletta ProkesProstitute
Götz SpielmannDirector / Screenplay / Producer
Mathias ForbergProducer
Heinz StussakProducer
Sandra BohleProducer
Maria GruberProduction Design
Martin GschlachtDirector Of Photography
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Revanche Ratings & Reviews

CrossCutCriticMay 19, 2025
Revanche To You, Who Mistook the Ache for a Target > “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” — Genesis 50:20 --- I. To You, Who Thought Justice Would Silence the Grief You didn’t want forgiveness. You wanted blood. You wanted someone else to feel it— the weight in your chest, the silence in your bed, the memory that wouldn’t let you breathe. So you made a plan. Careful. Clean. Quiet. An eye for an eye. A life for the one taken from you. You weren’t a monster. You were just broken, and trying to break something else in the hope it would unbreak you. This is your story. Revanche doesn’t begin in righteousness. It begins in ache. In the concrete hum of Vienna’s underworld. In the arms of a woman paid to love you and a system designed to keep you small. Tamara was going to be your future. But futures, in this world, don’t belong to people like you. She died in your arms, and no one paid for it. So you made someone pay. You went to the countryside with a gun and a plan. You watched. Waited. Stared through your scope at a man with a child’s eyes and a cop’s uniform. You thought that killing him would even the score. But what Revanche knows—what grief always knows before we do— is that revenge doesn’t balance anything. It just gives the wound a new name. If you’ve ever wanted someone else to feel what you couldn’t carry— if you’ve ever confused your longing with justice— then you already know this ache. And you already know that it doesn’t go away just because someone else begins to suffer. --- II. The Plan That Couldn’t Heal It was supposed to be clean. One shot. One man. And something inside you would release. But you hesitated. Not out of mercy. Out of memory. Because when you saw him— not as a badge, not as a target, but as a man— the rage trembled. And then the plan unraveled. Not in gunfire, but in quiet. The lake. The trees. The weight of waiting. Day after day, the impulse to act became the burden of not acting. The revenge you rehearsed began to rot in your chest. And there he was. The man you meant to kill. Feeding chickens. Fixing fences. Grieving. Yes, grieving. Not for you. Not even for her. But grieving something— somewhere deep and silent that mirrored your own. That was the first mercy: He was already carrying what you meant to make him feel. And in that realization, your plan began to die. Not all at once. Not with a confession or a sermon. But with the slow erosion that comes when you see the one you hate and realize he’s just as broken as you. If you’ve ever waited for vengeance to satisfy you— and found only silence— then you know this moment. The cross always undoes the sword. But it does so slowly. Inwardly. One cracked illusion at a time. --- III. The Woman Who Received the Wound and Turned It Into Life She should not be in this story. She didn’t pull the trigger. She didn’t love Tamara. She didn’t choose any of this. And yet— she stands in the center of what remains. Susanne, the officer’s wife. The woman whose husband fired the shot, whose arms receive the man who meant to kill him, whose body—quietly, defiantly—converts grief into grace. She does not preach. She doesn’t cry much. She simply acts. She offers Alex work. Bread. Conversation. A moment in a kitchen that could almost feel like forgiveness if either of them could name it. And then, she offers more. Not as romance. Not even fully as desire. But as a strange, sorrowful benediction. She receives Alex’s body. Not to comfort him. Not to betray her husband. But to plant something that will grow where violence once stood. She becomes the field. The place where vengeance dies and new life takes root. She knows her husband cannot father a child. She knows what Alex has carried in his chest. She receives it all—knowingly. Willingly. And through that painful exchange, she gives them both a future they could never have claimed on their own. If you’ve ever carried someone else’s wound and turned it into something living— something that might bless the very ones who caused it— then you already know this woman. She is not the hero. She is the vessel. And the cross always needs a vessel. --- IV. The Confession That Came Without Words He never says it. Never confesses. Never cries. But when Robert—the man he meant to kill— tells him about the shooting, about the woman who died, about the guilt he carries and cannot name— Alex listens. And in that silence, everything is spoken. Because Robert doesn’t know who he’s talking to. But Alex does. And so does God. This is not catharsis. There is no reckoning, no vindication. Only two men, bound by a bullet, mourning the same woman from opposite sides of the cross. One pulled the trigger. The other loaded the gun. Neither meant for her to die. And both know that doesn’t matter. So they share something older than justice. They share grief. And underneath that—culpability. Each was a cause. Each was a victim. And now, each becomes a father. If you’ve ever seen your enemy’s face and found it indistinguishable from your own— if you’ve ever carried a sin so quietly that even your confession came through someone else’s mouth— then you already know this moment. It is not resolution. It is revelation. And it breaks you cleanly, like light through stained glass. --- V. The Grace That Undid the Bullet It should have ended with death. With vengeance. With one man buried and the other walking away, emptied and alone. But grace has a different rhythm. And it always arrives offbeat. Alex never pulls the trigger. But what he plants—quietly, anonymously, inside the wife of the man he hated— grows anyway. A child. Not his. Not exactly. Not Robert’s either. But somehow—both of theirs. Because in that child lives the consequence and the conversion. The grief and the gift. The wound and the healing. This is not a happy ending. It is a cruciform one. Because nothing is fixed. Tamara is still gone. The guilt is still shared. The silence still stretches between them. But something has entered that silence. Something living. And that life—unsought, uninvited, and undeserved— redeems them both. Alex will not raise the child. Robert may never know the truth. Susanne carries it all, like Mary at the foot of the cross: the sorrow, the secret, the seed of resurrection. If you’ve ever watched your failure become someone else’s salvation— if you’ve ever let go of justice and received something softer in return— then you know this grace. It doesn’t erase what happened. It rewrites what happens next. --- Postscript Grace does not always come dressed in light. Sometimes it comes as a bullet that missed. A child not planned. A silence that stretched long enough for mercy to arrive. Revanche is not a story of justice. It is a story of grief transfigured. Of vengeance interrupted. Of two men who share a wound so deep they must let a child carry their hope forward. The cross is never obvious. But it always leaves something behind. A life. A silence. A grace that didn’t have to happen— but did anyway.

Revanche Trivia

Revanche was released on May 16, 2008.

Revanche was directed by Götz Spielmann.

Revanche has a runtime of 2 hr 1 min.

Revanche was produced by Mathias Forberg, Heinz Stussak, Götz Spielmann, Sandra Bohle.

The key characters in Revanche are Alex (Johannes Krisch), Tamara (Irina Potapenko), Robert (Andreas Lust).

Revanche is rated Not Rated.

Revanche is a Crime, Drama, Romance film.

Revanche has an audience rating of 8.3 out of 10.

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