Plot
A mysterious outsider's quiet life is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. Proving himself an amateur assassin, he winds up in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.
Release Year: 2013
Rating: 7.4/10 (429 voted)
Critic's Score: 73/100
Director: Jeremy Saulnier
Stars: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves
Storyline
A mysterious outsider's quiet life is turned upside down when he returns to his childhood home to carry out an act of vengeance. Proving himself an amateur assassin, he winds up in a brutal fight to protect his estranged family.
If you want to know how bad 2013 was, take a peek at the top 250 list
and find out how many of them were made on that year. As of 01/10/2013
(dd/mm/yyyy - just to clarify) this number is a staggering 0. It's too
early to determine whether 2013 was a great year for the accountants of
Hollywood but it sure was a dreadful (pending "Gravity") for its
pantheon. On the positive note, 2013 could be the onset of a very
promising director named Jeremy Saulnier and the beginning of a new
genre: the multiple-twist movies. The plot seems pretty straight
forward at first. Dwight (Macon Blair) is a homeless man living on the
outskirts of an amusement park. One day he finds that his longtime
nemesis (for reasons revealed later on in the film) is about to be
released from prison. Clearly, Dwight has no intention to turn the
other cheek in this case and he sets out to a successful assassination.
After committing his first criminal act (and certainly not the last)
Dwight moves in with his Burgois sister and her kids and finds out his
brutal, bloody and terribly conspicuous revenge is left unreported
because the victim's grieving family is gearing up for an act of
apocalyptic vengeance. Dwight is left with no choice but to accept the
challenge. Remember in the Matrix the big spoiler appears mid film? Or
how the gigantic spoiler is close to the finale at "The sixth sense"?
This movie is an installation of successive twists and I have to say
it's a very effective way to keep the viewer glued to his seat.
Saulnier's writing or casting are commendable but not revolutionary but
it's the movie's pacing that distinguish him from the multitude of
rookie directors with affordable cameras and editing software. You
could argue as to the integrity of some characters in the movie or even
question how imperative they are to the plot but when the movie is
layered through and Dwight's vigilante act appears more and more like a
fatal judgment error, a profound experience happens and the viewer's
empathy of the main protagonist wanes down. In a highly unusual
introduction at the Haifa film festival, a festival's representative
stated that Saulnier could the next Tarantino if he plays his cards
right. Saulnier vision of crime drama with moral issues is in fact a
breath of fresh air in a stagnant Ganre and one can forgive the
lackluster performance of Macon Blair or even look the other way with
some character development issues. These issues don't subtract the
film's appeal but they do make the comparison between the directors
premature to say the least.
I for one, thought that analogy is slightly optimistic. Tarantino took
the action Ganre and added complex narrative and time maneuvering (Most
notably in Pulp fiction but also at Reservoir dogs). The director
doesn't rock the revenge saga in such a manner but he might be a good
shot of making 2014 a much better movie year than 2013 was. This movie
is worth seeing and despite its modest budget, doesn't seem shoddy or
awkwardly delivered. I won't risk predicting that Saulnier will be a
household name in the future but I can safely foresee that although
this review (thanks for reading it) may be chronologically first on
IMDb, it won't be the last
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