Overview
The quiet life of a beach bum is upended by dreadful news. He sets off for his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance but proves an inept assassin and finds himself in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.
Dwight is a homeless man who lives out of the back of his car and survives on whatever he can find in the trash – he lost his purpose ever since his parents were killed when he was a child. When he finds out the killer is to be released on parole, he immediately decides to take action…
Blue Ruin is a story of revenge. Macon Blair plays Dwight perfectly; not crazy, not stupid, not strong, but very human, bumblingly sympathetic, ‘fairly determined’ and unhelpfully undexterous. As he sets out on his path to avenge his parents, he triggers consequences he had not foreseen.
Blue Ruin is a low budget movie – funded by the director and a Kickstarter campaign – and it benefits from that. It is a simple story but well executed – it is well paced and succeeds in building tension especially over the first half of the movie; it is not as taut over the second half but still strong enough to keep you fully engaged. It would have been nice to have had a bit more depth in the characters of Dwight’s adversaries, as it would have added to the tension and would have made the second half of the movie more meaningful and powerful. But don’t let that put you off; it is worth a watch if you enjoy a low-budget revenge story.
7/10