Blue Ruin

In the conventional revenge story, the wronged protagonist must endure and survive all manner of tribulations for the chance of a cathartic face-off with the prime villain in the final act. It’s a structure so elemental and ingrained that we rarely question it - to get to the payoff, you have to first dispatch several cycles of minions, usually with each level more difficult to conquer than its predecessor. That’s the way Bruce Lee, Charles Bronson and Chuck Norris did it.

But Jeremy Saulnier’s debut feature Blue Ruin - another movie partially funded by a Kickstarter campaign - is not a conventional revenge story, though it does offer some of the same cold thrills as the ’70s vigilante movies it echoes. It charts the grim trajectory of a shambling, damaged but apparently gentle soul who, denied justice for a primal wound, takes the law into his hands. Yet that’s only the first30 minutes or so of the story. What’s really interesting is what comes next.

When we meet Dwight Evans (Macon Blair), he’s a near-catatonic, bearded beach bum, living in the dilapidated husk of a Pontiac that gives the film its title. Feral and cunning, he lives off the scraps others leave. While he’s not above some petty larceny, one gets the feeling he’s harmless and tolerated by the denizens of the resort town he haunts. One morning a kindly police officer takes him in to the station because she doesn’t want him to be by himself when he gets the news that Will Cleland (Brent Werzner), who murdered Dwight’s parents, has been released from prison.

The news gives Dwight a sense of purpose, as he immediately sets out to avenge his family. He lacks the means to get a gun legally, so he connives to steal one, only to find himself thwarted by a trigger lock. Yet he goes ahead, finally accomplishing his mission in a vicious yet comic scene that echoes the tone of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple. Unfortunately, Dwight is an inept killer who leaves behind plenty of evidence. After breaking into a house to clean up, shave and throw on some pleated khakis and an oversize white dress shirt (he spends the last half of the movie looking like an insurance agency intern), he heads off to his estranged sister’s (Amy Hargreaves)house to break the news and wait for the police to pick him up.

Only trouble is, the Clelands apparently would prefer not to get the police involved. Which means they’re planning on settling this themselves.Which means - oh, my God, Dwight’s sister and her family are in danger!

Now the movie pivots into something more alert and insightful than a visceral payback film. The Clelands are better criminals than Dwight (it’s amusing to find Eve Plumb - Jan from The Brady Bunch - in their number) and, as it turns out, their cause might be as justified as Dwight’s. They’ve got better weapons, too, including crossbows, which sends Dwight to old high school buddy Ben (a very good Devin Ratray, whom some movie brats will recognize as the bully from Home Alone) with a very particular set of skills.

That the film never completely collapses into a good ol’ Gothic shoot ’em up is a tribute to Saulnier’s taut script, which manages to communicate much about the futility of violent action without ever seeming preachy. And it’s helped by impeccable performances by Blair - who resembles, physically and in mannerisms, a younger Matthew Broderick - and Kevin Kolack, who plays the wittiest Cleland brother.

Blue Ruin is a genre film, but it’s not an empty-headed one. It’s accessible in the same way Jim Thompson’s crime novels are - its view is more fatalistic, more alert to the limitations of the human mind and body (“That’s what bullets do,” Ben reminds a squeamish Dwight at a critical juncture) than the video game fantasies it superficially resembles.

Blue Ruin 88

Cast: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Eve Plumb Director: Jeremy Saulnier Rating: R, for strong bloody violence and language Running time: 90 minutes