Hey, you remember that time where we all got excited for that new Superman movie and then it sucked? Yeah, me too. One of the (many) problems I had with that movie is a problem I have with a lot of movies. Blood and violence (and bloody violence) too often have no consequences. Superman battles General Zod throughout Metropolis killing and injuring thousands while causing millions, if not billions of dollars in damages and nothing happens. The city is quickly rebuilt and Clark Kent goes back to work at the Daily Planet like it's just another Monday. And this happens all the time. Protagonists shoot up streets, crash through storefront windows and generally stir up all kinds of shit and we never see any of the fallout other than the occasional, "...Hey!" from one of the unfortunate store owners.
That's why it's so refreshing when a film actually deals with the less glamorous side of violence. In one of the best scenes in the Coen Brothers' debut feature Blood Simple - to which Blue Ruin has received a lot of comparisons - John Getz's character is trying to mop some blood that has pooled on the floor and is only succeeding in moving it around in a circle. Obviously it's a metaphor about violence and crime and how a person's sins cannot so easily be scrubbed away. But it's also a clear, visual representation of a simple idea: murder is not a business for amateurs. In Jeremy Saulnier's (Murder Party) brilliant entry into the revenge thriller genre, the director takes this basic principle and builds an entire movie around it - a man who is utterly unsuited to exact revenge exacts revenge to extreme repercussions. It's a story than has been told many times before, but where Saulnier changes the formula is what makes Blue Ruin so special. This isn't a farce. This isn't a film focused solely on the revenger's ineptitude. Occasionally he is resourceful, other times he is incompetent, but the focus is always on how he is out of his depth. No matter what he does or how he does it, what's important is just how unequivocally ordinary he is.
When we're first introduced to Dwight (Macon Blair), he is a haggard mess, soaking his frayed beard in a bath. As soon as he hears the front door opening, he quickly grabs his clothes and slips out of a window. Soon, we find out Dwight is a vagrant "living" out of the backseat of his bullethole-ridden Pontiac in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. When he isn't sneaking dips in the locals' tubs, he can be found picking thrown away grilled cheese sandwiches and tickets to Funland out of dumpsters on the pier. One morning, he's woken up by a kind police officer who brings him to the station in order to "give him a safe place to process the news." William Cleland, the man who was convicted of murdering both of Dwight's parents in rural Virginia, is being scheduled for release after striking a plea bargain. To himself, Dwight resolves to seek retribution himself by murdering Cleland, but he lacks the necessary tools, know-how and experience to get the job done. He also doesn't have an end game. Dwight fails to realize that while killing Will Cleland may be an eye-for-an-eye situation to him, the other Clelands may not see it that way. He can't see that once he begins this cycle of violence, it won't be nearly as easy to stop.
Dwight may lack forethought and any sense of real planning, but the key to Blue Ruin is that he isn't stupid, just a weak and desperate man attempting to work within the narrow set of options he's been given. Ideally, he would use a gun to complete the deed. But even the pawn shops want too much for their firearms and while he manages to steal one by smashing the driver's side window of a pickup truck he finds in a bar's parking lot, his attempts to remove the gun's lock go hilariously awry. Eventually, Dwight has to settle on a everyday, run-of-the-mill steak knife. It's a decision that changes the nature of the crime tremendously. Now he has to get in close. The kill has to be personal. Intimate. Just as closely, Blue Ruin follows every decision Dwight makes and revolves around the consequences of his actions. And while the logic behind all of his short-term decisions is both understandable and clear-cut (pun mildly intended), the tragedy lies in the long-term fallout that trails just out of sight.
It's clear that with Blue Ruin, Jeremy Saulnier is endeavoring to imbue a seemingly familiar genre flick with a decidedly art house aesthetic. It's a venture that is a magnificent success both in part because of his fantastically ominous compositions and because of his strong sense of editing which enables him to transform a number of misleadingly simple scenes into displays of taut, white-knuckle suspense. The film also benefits from Saulnier's adept skill at beautiful character moments like a diner scene between Dwight and his sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves). It's an incredibly quiet moment, but all of the years the two have spent apart and the duress and disappointment that hovers invisible above their heads is palpable. It's an important element that keeps Blue Ruin from being sucked too deeply in the conventions and pulp of its genre. The action is never allowed to become cartoonish to the point that it removes the audience from the flawed characters that are ultimately the cause of it.
Much of this has to do with the film's star, Macon Blair. Once Dwight shaves his shaggy beard and trades in his fluid soaked v-neck (I'll leave you to guess what fluids have soaked it) for an oversized dress shirt and slacks, he morphs from street-savvy vagrant to a near-cherub - apple-cheeked and brutally out of his element, too depressed and resentful to stop himself from doing things that a person with a stronger will and stronger convictions would avoid.
Though it arguably gets too pulpy for its own good near the end and though there are a few plot threads that can be nitpicked if you're so inclined to pick some nits, Blue Ruin is an impeccably shot, beautifully sharp and tightly structured thriller that both satisfies and transcends its genre status. In one of David Cronenberg's later films, the director argues that violence has a history. Blue Ruin argues that it also has a graphic and vigorous present. Like Blood Simple, it's a film that deals focusing on crimes of passion committed by people who are deeply flawed but disturbingly relatable in their mundanity. Blood Simple is about trying to clean up the blood left behind. Blue Ruin is about trying to restrict the blood that's still coming out.
8.5 out of 10
