Review: Blue Ruin
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
[Grade: B+] Blue Ruin plays in the grindhouse revenge-flick sandbox, but it's the kid rocking the most stylish overalls.
THE BIG PAYBACK: When Dwight (Macon Blair) learns that the man who murdered his parents is being released from jail on a technicality, he seeks bloody revenge.
City Paper grade: B+
Slitting open the vengeance genre with a pretty, pearl-handled straight razor, Jeremy Saulnier’s second feature peddles brutality and beauty, never insisting that one has anything to do with the other. A Kickstarter success story of the least grating caliber (stop talking, Zach Braff), it’s an auspicious statement piece for Saulnier, one that proves that real action and suspense can be captured in a cinematically “small” manner.
Blue Ruin plays in the grindhouse revenge-flick sandbox, but it's the kid rocking the most stylish overalls. Starring Saulnier’s friend Macon Blair, it rides shotgun alongside Dwight, a spooky-eyed, seemingly harmless bum living in his car on a quiet stretch of beach. His daily routine of napping, dumpster-diving and breaking into homes to bathe is scuttled once a deputy raps on his rear window, letting him know that the man convicted of murdering his parents has been released on a technicality.
Leaning on minimal dialogue that accomplishes maximum narrative movement, we learn that the loss of Dwight’s folks threw him into a hopeless spiral — until he hears this news. Rushing to prepare for a day whose arrival he long suppressed, Dwight silently stalks his nemesis, clumsily confronting him with a blade in a roadhouse restroom. It’s difficult to say if what happens next can be a considered a success, but it’s an event that sends Dwight and the audience barreling down a single-lane highway, stripping wrath and purpose down to bleached bones.
Saulnier makes the most of location, setting Dwight’s bleak advances against the haunting solitude of the shoreline, the oppressive dullness of suburbia and the sinister beauty of the backwoods. The score, from Philly-based composing team The Blair Brothers, ramps up the mod-noir sentiments without slipping into cliche. Saulnier’s only shortcoming is that he’s so wary of revealing information that the small moments between the big ones sag with questions. Still, there’s a feeling the answers would tell us more than we need to know.
