Directed by: Jeremy Saulnier
Starring: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, and Amy Hargeaves
Plot: An outsider comes back to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance.
Review:
Do you ever watch one of these vengeance movies and think, “Of course, they kidnap the daughter of a former secret agent turned overqualified bodyguard?” I always knew what my answer to that question was: because your average gas station attendant or bank manager doesn’t have the stones or the training to traverse the world, sleuth their way into an international human trafficking ring, and take out the former military unit protecting one of the richest guys on the Earth. Now, that’s a fucking movie. Certainly, better than some dumpy dad sitting on his hands, crying into his cereal bowl, while some cops fumble around trying to save the day.
This movie is neither of those, luckily, and it succeeds at being a better movie for it, one of the best of the year in my opinion. It is about Dwight, a regular guy, one who let himself go, living on the streets when he gets some bad news: the man who killed his parents is getting out of jail. So, despite not having a military or espionage background and whose criminal history is exclusive to stealing food and breaking into homes just to take a bath, Dwight takes matters into his own hand.
The success of his character rests on the shoulders of actor, Macon Blair, an actor I literally do not recognize from anything. IMDb was no help, but already he gives the performance to beat this year. Sadly, the too-early-in-the-game VOD release of the movie probably means it will avoid award attention at the end of the year. He is a brilliant combination of sadness and comedy, built on a perpetually troubled look on his face while haplessly maneuvering a seedy criminal underbelly of rural Virginia, something that resembles a modern “Hatfields and McCoys” rather than a redneck Goodfellas.
Reminiscent of Josh Brolin’s piece of No Country for Old Men or dare I say, “Breaking Bad,” Dwight struggles through the mundanity of criminal escapades. It is shot in a lot of close-ups of the kinds of minutia that would usually be skipped in a crime thriller. It takes a really talented director to make those kind of things tense, and that is only the tip of the iceberg of Saulnier is capable of delivering. I would say his secret is the clever way that he holds back the envelope rather than trying to out do the other crime thrillers. That’s how the genre has become increasingly like a parody of 90s Tarantino. The dialog is deliberately sparse, the gore and violence is much more genuinely dirty instead of rockstar dirty, and the action is whittled down to the bare essentials: desperate people with guns pointed at each other. It would be refreshing, if it wasn’t so damn frightening.
Rating: 9/10
