It could have been a lot better. The basic premise had potential. Five women who survived a Nazi concentration camp discover that the camp's commander is now living in Los Angeles and they set out to take their own revenge on him by killing him and facing the consequences as a group by all confessing to the murder. A lot could have been done with that story, but a lot wasn't done with it - or, a lot that was done with it didn't really work. The cast was OK. There were a lot of small screen veterans (Loretta Swit, Valerie Harper, Barbara Barrie among others) so the faces are familiar, although they could have done a better job with the fake accents. The development of the plan is a bit convoluted, and apparently takes place between rounds of a weekly mahjong game that the five play. I could believe the problems that the plot caused on the women's marriages, although thought there was maybe a bit too much focus on that particular issue, and it made this perhaps a bit too "soap-ish." The ending of the movie came as a bit of a surprise, although perhaps it was too contrived. In the end, the basic point here seemed to be that revenge doesn't really satisfy. The women got their revenge, but in the end seemed to acknowledge that they were still trapped in the horrors of their past. That was a decent philosophical reflection on revenge.
Review of The Execution
