Review of Blue Ruin (2014) by Jluis_001 — 05 Sep 2017

At first this movie may seem very familiar to many, those dark tones are recognizable from other fims, but its director turned it into an excellent film that follows a winding and bloody path to reach a cruel and brutal finale.

Blue Ruin is a tense thriller about a vagabond who without thinking much about it tries to get revenge for the death of his parents.

The film opens with a setting that sets the tone of a man who is running away, the director practically stick the camera to his protagonist Dwight Evans (Macon Blair), a quiet bum who survives through the garbage dumps and spends his nights in his worn-out Blue Pontiac.

His renewed path begins when he returns home once he has learned that a certain Will Cleland has been released from prison.

It is no spoiler to say that this man is considered by Dwight to be the cause of his misfortune, having snatched the life from his parents.

This makes it quite clear that there is an account to be settled, although all the nasty details are not immediately revealed, the script and its rhythm attracts you as a viewer, creating a sense of complicity with Dwight as he follows Will and his friends to a bar, armed simply with a small knife, but only with that, he initiates a series of brutal moments.

Macon Blair manages to make his performance quite interesting, finding himself in the middle between being an idiot and a amateur, a predator and but also a prey.

He makes plans in advance, takes calculated risks and still he messes up, much of the tension comes from his own fallibility, as well as his growing recognition that none of this can end well, and that leads to the impeccable climax.

I can only say that this is a superb independent project, that even in spite of its scarce budget never gives the impression of being a product of low quality.