`Revenge': Weak Plot In Sexy Melodrama Never Gets Untracked

X 1/2 ``Revenge,'' with Kevin Costner, Anthony Quinn, Madeleine Stowe, Sally Kirkland. Directed by Tony Scott, from a script by Jim Harrison and Jeffrey Fiskin. City Centre, Grand Cinemas Alderwood, John Danz, Oak Tree, Parkway Plaza, SeaTac Mall, Totem Lake. ``R'' - Restricted, due to language, nudity, violence.

While it's understandable that Kevin Costner would want to try something completely different at this stage in his career, he just seems miscast in ``Revenge,'' his first picture since ``Field of Dreams.''

In fact, hardly anyone comes off looking good in this glitzy and faintly ludicrous melodrama, in which Costner plays a retired Navy pilot who falls for the sexy young wife (Madeleine Stowe) of an old friend (Anthony Quinn) who turns out to be a ruthless criminal.

The movie is supposed to be about uncontrollable sexual attraction, but Costner and Stowe rarely strike sparks, and the depth of the friendship between Costner and Quinn has to be taken on faith. The script by Jim Harrison (``Cold Feet'') and Jeffrey Fiskin (``Cutter's Way''), based on Harrison's novella, sketchily establishes the characters and their relationships, and the actors have nothing to fall back on but personal charm.

Costner stretches his too far in a gratuitous and sentimental early scene, saying farewell to his fellow pilots, and it's impossible to accept him as a vengeful killer later in the story. Costner can communicate wildness, as he did in ``Silverado'' and to some degree ``Bull Durham,'' but he's too rational and decent a presence to go off the deep end this way.

It's also hard to understand why Quinn all but invites Costner to spend time alone with his wife, then eavesdrops on their plans for a getaway. While Quinn ponders the wisdom of the union (``Sometimes I think I should have married her mother''), Stowe gives off decidedly mixed signals; it's impossible to make sense of their relationship. They never seem married, and Costner and Stowe never seem attracted enough to each other to flirt with Quinn's wrath.

British director Tony Scott, who began his American career with the elegant vampire movie, ``The Hunger,'' then went on to direct the No. 1 box-office hits of 1986 and 1987 (``Top Gun,'' ``Beverly Hills Cop II''), pours on the Mexican atmosphere, but he can't turn up the heat in the foreground.

The script ends up recycling elements of previous hits from Costner (an uninhibited sex scene in a car recalls ``No Way Out''), Scott (the opening aerial sequence is pure ``Top Gun'') and Quinn (how many times has he played this power-hungry tycoon?). Except for a tantalizing episode in which Stowe nudges the nervous Costner while they slice lemons in a dimly lit kitchen, this movie about illicit sex and its consequences is without passion.