A suggestion by Brian Panowich
I believe that every human being has entertained the idea of committing murder at least once in their lives, at least silently. I can't think of a more transformative event to happen to anybody, except maybe sex-reassignment surgery or exploring another planet, which is currently impossible despite what Christopher Nolan would like to believe. BLUE RUIN is the little movie that could, which started as one of many Kickstarter pipe dreams, yet was shot and became a cult hit almost instantly. It's about a man who decided to act on his revenge fantasy and commits murder. A lot. It's about fantasies a lot, too and how it feels like when reality doesn't play out like what you had in mind.
Dwight Evans' (Macon Blair) parents were murdered a long time ago, over a domestic dispute. Dwight's dad fell in love with a local thug's wife named Wade Cleland Sr. and got himself and his wife shot over this. His sister Sam (Amy Hargreaves) was able to move on and build her own family, but Dwight's life entered a state of wandering statis. He let go of everything he posessed except his car and started living like a vagrant, waiting for nothing but Wade Cleland Jr.'s (who took the fall for his dad) prison release. When that day finally comes, a disposessed yet zen Dwight is more than happy to trigger what is supposed to be the final showdown.
Everyone loves a good revenge movie. Everyone has been wronged at least once in their lives and found themselves in the legal impossibility to retaliate, at least not in the visceral, satisfying way they would've liked. BLUE RUIN is a decent revenge movie, it's well-written, clever and uses minimalism to its advantage, but it's obsessed with telling a ''realistic'' story, per se and draws the portrait of a protagonist consumed by his fantasies of revenge, who never really had a life of his own and despite that he's dealing with a dangerous-looking family, you have to take his word that his parents have been murdered, because there is no trace of them in the movie. BLUE RUIN is a revenge movie that is more mimesis than cartharsis, which is an interesting exercise, but undermines the narrative.
Not the type of guy you'd relate to, except for murder and revenge, y'know?
BLUE RUIN stands out by its simple, elegant art direction that shuns visual excess in every form. The idea's been done before (dialogue-light genre movies with arthouse sensibilities, I'm thinking here of Gus Van Sant's ELEPHANT, from the top of my head), but BLUE RUIN is a cohesive effort and a pleasant viewing. There are a couple clichés, but not that many. The most problematic transgression would be the scene where Dwight pulls an arrow from his leg using gear he bought himself at the pharmacy. It's been done in every tough guy survival movie, starting with RAMBO III, a little more than 15 years ago. I believe it was meant to be a gory reminder of how much was at stake for Dwight, but it didn't work for me. Been there too many times.
I liked BLUE RUIN, but I didn't go crazy over it like a lot of critics did. It's an honest and cohesive first movie that takes strange, sometimes ill-advised decision, but that manages to not to collapse and delivers a predictable, yet tense and spectacular ending. That's more than most movies can say for themselves. BLUE RUIN is bound to be more fondly remember than it should though because it's an ambitious and high quality Kickstarter project, and that it's an above average revenge movie, so people will automatically be more emotionally invested into it. I have a couple issues with BLUE RUIN, but don't get me wrong, it's still above-average cinema and it's worth at least the investment of your time.