Cannes Review: Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin is the kind of movie I go to film festivals for. It’s totally unknown, a raw and powerful voice, and it just blew me away. Since I was blessed to see it so fresh, I will try to preserve as much of the specific surprise for you as I can. By the time the film is distributed it may have a totally spoileriffic trailer, but that won’t be on me. At the same time, I don’t want to go too J.J. Abrams on you and build up something unfairly.

Dwight (Macon Blair) is a homeless man who finds out that his parents’ murderer is being released from prison. He begins making preparations and following the prisoner after release. Going after the killer goes deeper as you can imagine, and it becomes the most unlikely badass thriller.

I love how much of the film is portrayed without dialogue. The visual action tells the story, which is what I liked the most about No Country for Old Men. You know what he’s doing when he’s tailing the car that picked up a dude outside a prison gate. Yeah, I compared Blue Ruin to the Coen Brothers’ Oscar winner. It also has elements of Straw Dogs and First Blood. Now are you interested? It’s somewhat like Straw Dogs from the outside, which I don’t intend to make sense until you see the movie like I’m recommending.

What writer/director Jeremy Saulnier is doing is showing us the elements and letting them play out. It amplifies the thrill of very grounded, minimal action. Just like Josh Brolin figuring out how to hide the money in the motel vent, Dwight makes plans he never talks about but we understand them completely. To me it’s an action movie but I’m burying that sort of in the middle of a paragraph because I know if I come out with it then people will expect something it’s not. There is violence and it’s exciting, and I would consider each violent sequence a set piece, but I’m talking set piece in an intellectual sense. These are the centerpieces of visual storytelling and as effective as Iron Man 3‘s drone suit battle. I’m sorry, Jeremy, I’m not helping with your sober, minimalist film.

When there are dialogue scenes in between these sequences, it is juicy. The film addresses expository exchanges in a fresh way, and those revelations are both true to life and true about conventions of cinema. We take certain things for granted in revenge stories so when a character points it out or alludes to it, we can question the assumptions of storytelling while we absorb the information. When Dwight gets more information, it shifts the paradigm or at least complicates it. Even what you think you know about the setup is wrong. People speak meaningfully without pretentious words. It’s refreshing to see great truths conveyed without catch phrases. Dwight’s friend Ben (Devin Ratray) is particularly poignant.

The cast of Blue Ruin all look like regular people, which can be a cliche of indie movies. “Look at all our non-actors. Isn’t it real, man?” In the case of Blue Ruin, the actors give great performances so it’s not about not being stars. It’s that Dwight is absolutely shattered by the trauma in his life and terrified the deeper he gets into this story. The way Dwight handles violence is unique, avoiding both the cliche of the bloodthirsty and the cliche of the blood spattered pacifist. He just deals with it. Amy Hargreaves is equally real in her scenes as Dwight’s sister. Perhaps that’s why Blue Ruin hit me so hard. I did not expect these characters to be in a badass movie.

Most importantly, I think all the stuff in this movie happens because it’s awesome. We’re with the characters, it’s well done and legitimate drama, but it’s happening because it’s awesome. To see Dwight survive what he survives is awesome, and the specific ways he delivers justice/vengeance are awesome. Blue Ruin takes a simple premise and keeps the universal truth while ditching the universal cliches. It’s awesome.