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"Rendel" boasts that it's the first full length superhero from Finland and, sadly, that ends up feeling like the only questionable accolade it truly deserves. The story centers around a vengeful vigilante taking down a corrupt pharmaceutical company run by cartoonishly over-the-top thugs that, naturally, have wronged him in the past. Simple, a bit "been there, done that", but who doesn't love a good revenge flick, right?
Apparently, the creative team behind this doesn't because the movie seems hellbent on crowding the goings-on with a panoply of characters and subplots that are not only thinly developed but serve only unnecessarily complicate the proceedings. Worse, they employ a poorly executed flashback narrative to unveil the origins of the titular character which effectively deflates any of his presence or the audiences desire to see him do his thing. In fact, it raises far too many questions about how his skill set/powers work and, by the end, leaves plenty of them unsatisfactorily unanswered. As for the answers that are provided...well, get ready to roll your eyes at those.
What "Rendel" seems to want to do the most is ooze "edgy coolness" with its dark hero, extreme characters, and violence that, though brutal, also comes off oddly flat and unimpressive. Characters behave like caricatures of their inherently larger than life comic book cousins. Twists, stakes, and tension (and I do use those words loosely) are all played up for response but they too feel so flaccid that they border on laughable. This isn't helped by the dour cinematography or the forgettable soundtrack.
All that said, as a long time comic book reader, I couldn't deny that "Rendel, in all its daftness, evokes the feeling of those late 80's-90's era anti-hero comics from publishers of lesser renown (down to their glaring faults). I suppose if you have a nostalgic hunger for that largely long-gone ilk of comics this might slake your thirst. However, like those comics, "Rendel" proves to be poorly constructed, rife with tired tropes, overly serious, and over-reliant on violence or an outdated aura of "cool". Moreover, like those comics, it was best looked through once and then relegated to faint memory.
