The keys are in the car.

Blue Ruin

(2013)

(SPOILERS) If Jeremy Saulnier’s gripping, low-key revenge thriller is guilty of anything, it’s underplaying. That’s not so much a criticism as an attempt to explain why it might not have found the widest of audiences. From it’s measured, assured unfolding to muted lead character, Blue Ruin is a finely crafter slow-burn suspenser.

It’s also pretty much an anti-revenge flick. Vigilante justice is dispensed by one wholly ill-equipped for it, but so ravaged by the effects of loss upon his psyche that he is compelled to act. There is no uplift or catharsis resulting from the actions of Dwight (Macon Blair). The murder of his parents has left him an unkempt drifter, living off the map in the car that was the scene of the crime (and the blue ruin of the title). On learning of the release from prison of Wade Cleland, the man convicted of their murder, Dwight confronts and stabs him to death in a club toilet.

That isn’t the end of the matter, as the rest of the Cleland clan vow revenge. This brings Dwight’s sister and her family into danger, and Dwight is forced to continue the escalating blood feud.

It wouldn’t take much to tell this story in a very different way. Indeed, such films are rife, with much more classically heroic, impassioned protagonists. Saulnier is careful to snatch such comfort away from the viewer. We spend the entire movie in the company of Dwight, but he remains an enigmatic figure. Introverted, dishevelled and unaccustomed to talking to others, he’s the most unlikely seeker of retribution conceivable. He has no real skills for his self-appointed task, other than a determination to end the reprisals. He gets lucky with his initial assault, but further encounters show him to be woefully out of his depth.

Dwight makes frequent and fundamental errors, shining a flashlight around in a darkened house, stealing a gun with a clamp on it, unsuccessfully attempting a DIY repair of an arrow wound, and completely failing to dispatch one of the Clelands in his trunk (“Fish in a barrel” mocks his prisoner, “You missed from two yards?” comments Ben). Most significantly, Dwight initiates a wave of violence through being misinformed. Wade took the rap for his dying father so, even if the family are entirely culpable of many and varied crimes, there’s no one left to account for this particular one.

The comments of his sister (Amy Hargreaves) are especially resonant. She may be pleased when she hears Wade is dead, but when her family is threatened she is less sympathetic to her brother (“I’d forgive you if you were crazy. But you’re not, you’re weak”). The implication is clear; Dwight lacks the strength to carry on with his life. He has been stuck in the same space for nigh-on two decades, and it has blinded him. His recognition of the full tragedy comes in his conversation with the remaining Clelands during the bloody final scene; “You know what’s awful? Just cos my dad loved your mom, we all end up dead”. The only hope is that his half-brother (the fruit of the union between his pa and the Cleland ma), who shot but didn’t want to kill Dwight and flees the scene leaving his gun behind, has ended the cycle.

Dwight’s personality isn’t laid out on a plate, but that makes him a much more fascinating character. Our first sighting is of man gone to seed, dilapidated and hirsute, but a shave and haircut reveals a small bookish fellow. He’s quietly methodical, emphasised by the rigorous order with which he cleans up after himself. If he lacks the traits of the classical hero, and if his sister has something in her comments, Dwight is armed with the admirable trait of stoicism in the face of a certain demise.

He is also characterised by sadness rather than righteous fury, the final confrontation emphasising his regretfulness rather than malice or hatred. The Clelands, in contrast, are a particularly loathsome, irredeemable bunch. Had Saulnier chosen to emphasise this aspect he could easily have turned this into a victory over those who “had it coming”.

Besides Blair, who has something of Paul Giamatti but understated, the most memorable turn comes from Devin Ratray as Ben, an old school friend and veteran. His career stretches back to Home Alone 2: Lost in New York and beyond, but he was most recently notable in Nebraska. His particular (legally rigorous but morally flexible) code (“I had to wait for him to aim before I could shoot”) emphasises a rich vein of subdued humour throughout, from Dwight having to escape in the car whose tyre he just slashed to his pathetic, little boy confession at the emergency room (“I had an accident on my leg”) and his trunk prisoner’s offer of help when Dwight says he will not let him out until he is armed (“I can get you a gun!”)

Saulnier has made a great little thriller, but one that requires perseverance. There’s minimal dialogue during the first half hour (a third of the picture’s concise running time) and he maintains the subdued aspect of his protagonist throughout. It will be interesting to see if his follow up, Green Room, sustains the quality on show here.

Your Mickey Mouse is one big stupid dope!

Enemy Mine (1985) (SPOILERS) The essential dynamic of Enemy Mine – sworn enemies overcome their differences to become firm friends – was a well-ploughed one when it was made, such that it led to TV Tropes assuming, since edited, that it took its title from an existing phrase (Barry Longyear, author of the 1979 novella, made it up, inspired by the 1961 David Niven film The Best of Enemies ). The Film Yearbook Volume 5 opined that that Wolfgang Petersen’s picture “ lacks the gritty sauciness of Hell in the Pacific”; John Boorman’s WWII film stranded Lee Marvin and Toshiro Mifune on a desert island and had them first duking it out before becoming reluctant bedfellows. Perhaps germanely, both movies were box office flops.

If I do nothing else, I will convince them that Herbert Stempel knows what won the goddam Academy Award for Best goddam Picture of 1955. That’s what I’m going to accomplish.

Quiz Show (1994) (SPOILERS) Quiz Show perfectly encapsulates a certain brand of Best Picture nominee: the staid, respectable, diligent historical episode, a morality tale in response to which the Academy can nod their heads approvingly and discerningly, feeding as it does their own vainglorious self-image about how times and attitudes have changed, in part thanks to their own virtuousness. Robert Redford’s film about the 1950s Twenty-One quiz show scandals is immaculately made, boasts a notable cast and is guided by a strong screenplay from Paul Attanasio (who, on television, had just created the seminal Homicide: Life on the Streets ), but it lacks that something extra that pushes it into truly memorable territory.

Other monks will meet their deaths here. And they too will have blackened fingers. And blackened tongues.

The Name of the Rose (1986) (SPOILERS) Umberto Eco wasn’t awfully impressed by Jean Jacques-Annaud’s adaptation of his novel – or “ palimpsest of Umberto Eco’s novel ” as the opening titles announce – to the extent that he nixed further movie versions of his work. Later, he amended that view, calling it “ a nice movie ”. He also, for balance, labelled The Name of the Rose his worst novel – “ I hate this book and I hope you hate it too ”. Essentially, he was begrudging its renown at the expense of his later “ superior ” novels. I didn’t hate the novel, although I do prefer the movie, probably because I saw it first and it was everything I wanted from a medieval Sherlock Holmes movie set in a monastery and devoted to forbidden books, knowledge and opinions.

Say hello to the Scream Extractor.

Monsters, Inc. (2001) (SPOILERS) I was never the greatest fan of Monsters, Inc. , even before charges began to be levelled regarding its “true” subtext. I didn’t much care for the characters, and I particularly didn’t like the way Pixar’s directors injected their own parenting/ childhood nostalgia into their plots. Something that just seems to go on with their fare ad infinitum. Which means the Pixars I preferred tended to be the Brad Bird ones. You know, the alleged objectivist. Now, though, we learn Pixar has always been about the adrenochrome, so there’s no going back…

No one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.

The Matrix (1999) (SPOILERS) Twenty years on, and the articles are on the defining nature of The Matrix are piling up, most of them touching on how its world has become a reality, or maybe always was one. At the time, its premise was engaging enough, but it was the sum total of the package that cast a spell – the bullet time, the fashions, the soundtrack, the comic book-as-live-action framing and styling – not to mention it being probably the first movie to embrace and reflect the burgeoning Internet ( Hackers doesn’t really count), and subsequently to really ride the crest of the DVD boom wave. And now? Now it’s still really, really good.

All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies.

Watership Down (1978) (SPOILERS) I only read Watership Down recently, despite having loved the film from the first, and I was immediately impressed with how faithful, albeit inevitably compacted, Martin Rosen’s adaptation is. It manages to translate the lyrical, mythic and metaphysical qualities of Richard Adams’ novel without succumbing to dumbing down or the urge to cater for a broader or younger audience. It may be true that parents are the ones who get most concerned over the more disturbing elements of the picture but, given the maturity of the content, it remains a surprise that, as with 2001: A Space Odyssey (which may on the face of it seem like an odd bedfellow), this doesn’t garner a PG certificate. As the makers noted, Watership Down is at least in part an Exodus story, but the biblical implications extend beyond Hazel merely leading his fluffle to the titular promised land. There is a prevalent spiritual dimension to this rabbit universe, one very much

Piece by piece, the camel enters the couscous.

The Forgiven (2021) (SPOILERS) By this point, the differences between filmmaker John Michael McDonagh and his younger brother, filmmaker and playwright Martin McDonagh, are fairly clearly established. Both wear badges of irreverence and provocation in their writing, and a willingness to tackle – or take pot-shots – at bigger issues, ones that may find them dangling their toes in hot water. But Martin receives the lion’s share of the critical attention, while John is generally recognised as the slightly lesser light. Sure, some might mistake Seven Psychopaths for a John movie, and Calvary for a Martin one, but there’s a more flagrant sense of attention seeking in John’s work, and concomitantly less substance. The Forgiven is clearly aiming more in the expressly substantial vein of John’s earlier Calvary, but it ultimately bears the same kind of issues in delivery.

In a few moments, you will have an experience that will seem completely real. It will be the result of your subconscious fears transformed into your conscious awareness.

Brainstorm (1983) (SPOILERS) Might Brainstorm have been the next big thing – a ground-breaking, game-changing cinematic spectacle that had as far reaching consequences as Star Wars (special effects) or Avatar (3D) – if only Douglas Trumbull had been allowed to persevere with his patented “Showscan” process (70mm film photographed and projected at 60 frames per second)? I suspect not; one only has to look at the not-so-far-removed experiment of Ang Lee with Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk , and how that went down like a bag of cold sick, to doubt that any innovation will necessarily catch on (although Trumbull at least had a narrative hinge on which to turn his “more real than real” imagery, whereas Lee’s pretty much boiled down to “because it was there”). Brainstorm ’s story is, though, like its title, possibly too cerebral, too much concerned with the consciousness and touting too little of the cloyingly affirmative that Bruce Rubin inevitably brings to his screenplays. T

Maybe the dingo ate your baby.

Seinfeld 2.9: The Stranded The Premise George and Elaine are stranded at a party in Long Island, with a disgruntled hostess.

He tasks me. He tasks me, and I shall have him.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982) (SPOILERS) I don’t love Star Trek , but I do love Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan . That probably isn’t just me, but a common refrain of many a non-devotee of the series. Although, it used to apply to The Voyage Home (the funny one, with the whales, the Star Trek even the target audience for Three Men and a Baby could enjoy). Unfortunately, its high regard has also become the desperate, self-destructive, song-and-verse, be-all-and-end-all of the overlords of the franchise itself, in whichever iteration, it seems. This is understandable to an extent, as Khan is that rare movie sequel made to transcendent effect on almost every level, and one that stands the test of time every bit as well (better, even) as when it was first unveiled.

Now In Full Color, with a Happier Ending

Search This Blog