What is also essential to understand before going in is Love Espionage: Spy Revenge is a low budget indie film in every sense of the word. It employs as many guerilla film tactics as possible under Jeter’s clear vision and her limited resources. The best compliment I can give for Love Espionage: Spy Revenge is director Jeter wanted to make a movie, and she did. She wrote the script and told a 90-minute story with action, romance, drama, stunts, music…the works. It has a coherent storyline while displaying her love of filmmaking. It is what it is.
That said, Love Espionage: Spy Revenge has a lot of problems. The worst is sound. It’s inconsistent. Some dialogue has loud ambient noise behind it and then jumps to a clean take. There’s constant intermixing of good and bad sounding dialogue. The film’s acting isn’t Oscar-worthy by any means. The Russian accents of the villains are not good. The photography was decent—the quality you’d expect for a low budget indie—and the action is relatively tame—considering you don’t want to injure any of your friends.
“…a 90-minute story with action, romance, drama, stunts, music…the works.”
What would help in Jeter’s next outing is to invest in some proper sound equipment. It’s not overly expensive. Then find someone who wants to be a director of photography and can help find interesting angles and composition that supports the story. Get help in editing, as some of the sequences don’t move swift enough, especially during the slower moments. If you want to stay in the genre, definitely spin-off the Penny Winters character into her own tale. She was probably the most interesting character between her and Carr. The story potential is quite intriguing and maybe add a little more authenticity into her role at the CIA.
I can’t recommend Love Espionage: Spy Revenge as an entertaining film in good conscious. I can though recommend it to anyone trying to make an action thriller with very little money. You’ll get ideas of what’s possible for emerging filmmakers just starting out.
"…pretty much on par with your typical James Bond movie"
