Blue Ruin

I was excited to see Blue Ruin.  I’d already seen both Murder Party and Green Room, and was interested to see the film that bridged the gap between two films that were so different.  In terms of tone, however, this film is much closer to Green Room, and Murder Party remains a weird anomaly in director Jeremy Saulnier’s career.  Blue Ruin, however, still retains a certain Indy feel to it, with long periods of silence, while Green Room gave the impression that Saulnier wanted at least the potential for a more mainstream hit.

Dwight Evans (Macon Blair) is a homeless man with an old car who lives near the beach.  This is probably one of the more realistic portrayals of homelessness I’ve seen in film, with Dwight treated as a person with active agency throughout the story, rather than a static stereotypical bum living in the inner city begging for change.  There’s also a sense that, despite his vagrancy, Dwight is viewed as a member of the community.  The local police are familiar enough with him to bring him into the station when Wade Cleland (Sandy Barnett) is released from prison, to let Dwight know that his parents’ killer is now free.

This is a movie that believes in slow, deliberate build-up.  Where Green Room was Hitchcock, this movie is made in the vein of Blood Simple, although we never really leave the perspective of our protagonist.  We see Dwight make his plans for revenge, and kill Wade with barely a struggle.  However, Dwight leaves his car, registered at his sister Sam’s (Amy Hargreaves) address behind, and steals Wade’s limo.  In an awkward scene, we find that Wade’s brother William (David Thompson) was in the back seat, and Dwight allows him to escape.

Realizing the Clelands will be coming for the owner of the car, Dwight warns his sister and her family to flee, and waits for them at her house.  The confrontation ends with Dwight wounded, but capturing Teddy Cleland (Kevin Kolack) in the back of his car.  Failing to remove an arrow from his leg, Dwight eventually goes into a hospital and passes out, waking up to find his wound stitched up.  I got a laugh imagining Teddy locked in the trunk for all of this.

Dwight is able to talk a High School friend named Ben (Devin Ratray) into loaning him a gun to interrogate Teddy.  During the questioning, Teddy manages to get the gun away from Dwight, and Ben (who was watching from cover, knowing Dwight was incompetent) is forced to step in and kill Teddy.  More significantly, Teddy reveals that Wade took the fall for their late father, and the man responsible for the deaths of Dwight’s parents died content, and out of prison.  He also mentions that the murder was in retaliation for an affair Dwight’s father had with the wife of “Big Wade.”

With Teddy dead, and the truth revealed, Dwight allows Ben to teach him basic marksmanship and prepare him for a confrontation.  Beginning to have doubts about his mission, Dwight goes to the Cleland house to find it deserted as the family has gone out hunting him.  In a show of decency, Dwight buries Teddy next to Big Wade, but also takes the time to piss on the grave of his parents’ killer.

Dwight’s next move is to leave a voicemail on the Cleland’s phone.  I’m not entirely sure if this was intended simply to distract them when they returned so Dwight could ambush them, or if he intended to lure them into revealing their intentions towards his sister.  Either way, once they return and make it clear from their reaction to the message that they intend to kill Sam as well, Dwight opens fire from behind them.

However, William ambushes Dwight, but fails to finish him off.  Dwight reveals that he’s realized William is his half-brother, and offers the boy his car to run away from the cycle of violence.  William accepts, and leaves the Cleland house behind.  The remaining Cleland’s go for the one gun in the house Dwight missed, and everyone still in the house dies.

This is a good drama, but it’s primary weakness is the decision to stick exclusively to Dwight’s point-of-view.  For most of the movie this seems to work, however it creates a real dramatic problem for the ending, as we’re asked to care about a character who’s been very briefly in two scenes.  The film would have massively benefited from showing us the perspective of the Clelands, and building William more as a character.  As it is, he’s a stand-in for a youth escaping a cycle of familial violence, with no traits beyond his relative innocence, and the fact that he’s a bastard.

That’s hardly enough to detract from the rest of the movie, however.  In fact, it seems like fixing the ending could very well ruin the rest of the movie, by breaking up a tight, intense thriller with extraneous scenes.  It’s a paradox, but also a very good movie.