Revenge films are generally pretty simple. They introduce a wronged party, an antagonist that did the wronging, and then they do whatever they can to build anticipation for the act of revenge, to make you crave it so much that you start to feel a certain amount of blood lust, before finally turning loose the blood-letting in all of its splattery glory. The protagonists of these films are generally very driven and capable, and they serve as righteous super-humans who we, the viewer, can live out our fantasies of being badass through. Writer/director Jeremy Saulnier’s new revenge film, Blue Ruin, isn’t anything like that though. Instead, it features an in-over-his-head protagonist whose primal need for revenge flings him into a dangerous world that he’s not prepared to handle. He’s not a hero who we can project our fantasies onto, but he makes up for that by being a human being who we can relate to—and that’s pretty cool.
Said protagonist, Dwight, is played by Macon Blair, whose expressive face allows us to see every bit of panic, anger, and sadness he feels as he travels through his complex journey. When we first meet him he’s a shabby, bearded drifter whose life has clearly been detoured thanks to something profound. That something, as we come to learn, was the death of his family. Our story gets set into motion when he learns that the guy who caused their death is being released from prison. Soon, a clumsy murder is attempted, a retaliation is sworn by the other party, and before we know it, our grief-crazy hero is involved in a murderous game of cat and mouse with a group of criminals who are far more experienced with violence and murder than he is. There is hope though. It turns out his friend Ben (Devin Ratray) is kind of a gun nut, has some experience with killing, and is willing to lend him a weapon. To put all of the cards on the table, Ratray played Buzz in Home Alone, and there’s a scene here where he brags because he owns the A-Team gun. Buzz with the A-Team gun may be the best thing I’ve seen all year.
A streak of dark humor isn’t all that Blue Ruin has to offer though. The Dwight character gets well-established over the course of the film, and Blair does a great job making him feel authentic and getting you to sympathize with his plight. The story is simple and focused, like all revenge stories should be. Dwight’s inexperience with guns and fighting and murder lends the proceedings quite a bit of tension too. It’s always abundantly clear that he could screw something up so bad at any moment that it would mean his death and the death of innocents. Also, that inexperience lends some clumsiness and reality to the death scenes, which are remarkably brutal without feeling like exploitation. Think the prison shanking scene in A Prophet. The violence here is hyper-realistic, and that’s all it needs to be, because real violence is disgusting. Blue Ruin is a good time for fans of revenge movies, because it’s a great revenge story on the surface level, but it’s also a good time for people looking for something more unique, because it throws enough wrenches in the works and changes up the formula enough to be interesting apart from the therapeutic killing. Give it a watch, it will treat you well.
