WMS

Avengement (2019)

Directed by Jesse V. Johnson

No — Avengement is not woke, scoring 8 out of 100 on our wokeness meter.

Avengement is a loud, kinetic exercise in British melodrama.

Consciousness Markers

💰
Eat the Rich20

A loan-shark racket that entraps debtors is depicted, and Cain ultimately redirects his brother's £2 million to 147 victims, a faint Robin Hood gesture, but it is revenge-motivated rather than an ideological indictment of capital.

🎭
Representation Casting12

The cast is a largely white British ensemble (Adkins, Fairbrass, Turgoose, Moran) with Terence Maynard in a minor role; diversity here is incidental to a London gangster setting and never remarked upon.

👑
Feminist Agenda10

Kierston Wareing's barmaid Bez is a hard-nosed combatant who lands blows, but she exists as a gangland fixture rather than a vehicle for any feminist thesis.

📢
Lecture Energy8

The film is a bone-crunching punch-up with profane gangster patter and melancholy flashbacks; it preaches nothing.

🏳️‍🌈
LGBTQ+ Themes0

No LGBTQ+ characters, relationships, or themes appear anywhere in the film.

✊
Racial Consciousness0

The film is entirely devoid of racial commentary or thematic engagement with race, despite a mixed cast.

🌱
Climate Crusade0

No environmental or climate content whatsoever.

💗
Body Positivity0

No body-positive messaging or diverse body representation as a theme.

🧠
Neurodivergence0

No neurodivergent characters or themes are present.

📖
Revisionist History0

Fictional revenge narrative; the Harakiri inspiration and true-crime documentary research do not constitute historical revisionism.

Why it received this score

Avengement is a loud, kinetic exercise in British melodrama. We are presented with a narrative concerning prison escape and subsequent revenge, delivered with a relentless commitment to visceral action. The film operates within a tightly confined London framework, yet its social consciousness remains surprisingly shallow. The entire ensemble is a uniformly white cohort, and the production refuses to deploy any form of cultural diversity beyond what is incidental to the setting. It is a story driven by personal grievances, not by a specific progressive agenda. The film is content to let its brutal choreography speak for itself rather than attempting any form of elaborate ideological statement.

We see a slight, begrudging attempt at addressing economic exploitation through the lens of a loan shark racket. The protagonist's eventual act of redistributing a substantial sum to one hundred and forty-seven victims offers a faint Robin Hood gesture. However, this moment serves only as the final, bloody coda to a vendetta, not as a structured indictment of systemic capital. The barmaid Bez occupies a role that suggests a hard-nosed capability, yet she exists merely as a fixture of the criminal landscape, not as a vehicle for any modern feminist thesis. The film is unafraid of profanity or violence, preferring the grit of the street to the comfort of a lecture.

Ultimately, Avengement functions as a highly proficient piece of genre cinema. It eschews the burden of deep social commentary, focusing instead on the physical toll of its conflict. The narrative commitment is to the punch, the shot, and the melancholy of the past. It is a relentless study in personal trauma made manifest through spectacular, albeit culturally unchallenging, mayhem. We find the sheer kinetic energy of the endeavor commendable, even if the thematic depth is as thin as the plot's initial premise.

Analysis generated by our Consciousness Algorithm

Share this score
Director: Jesse V. Johnson
Cast: Scott Adkins, Craig Fairbrass, Thomas Turgoose, Nick Moran, Kierston Wareing, Leo Gregory, Beau Fowler, Louis Mandylor
Genres: Crime, Action, Thriller
Studios: Compound B, Dreamstage Films, Ehud Releasing

Synopsis

While on a prison furlough, a lowly criminal evades his guards and returns to his old stomping ground to take revenge on the people who turned him into a cold blooded killer.

Questions about Avengement

Is Avengement woke?

No — Avengement is not woke, scoring 8 out of 100 on our wokeness meter. That earns it a verdict of Ultra Based.

Does Avengement have any woke elements?

Very few. None of the 10 markers reaches 30, the level where a marker counts as present; the highest is Eat the Rich at 20.

How does Avengement compare to other 2019 movies?

It ranks #196 of the 284 films from 2019 we've scored; their average is 22. The wokest is Black Christmas (79).

How is the Woke Score calculated?

An AI-assisted process researches the film and its reception, scores it 0–100 on ten markers, then combines those into one 0–100 Woke Score. It measures a specific set of 2020s cultural themes, not film quality.

Related rankings