Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Cast: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves, Kevin Kolack, Eve Plumb, David W. Thompson, Brent Werzner, Stacy Rock, Sidné Anderson, Bonnie Johnson, Daniel L. Kelly, Ydaiber Orozco, Erica Generaux Smith.
When one plots revenge they had better dig two graves…but once revenge is thrust into the hands of the meek and mild the body count could be a lot higher as the film starring the superb Macon Blair, Blue Ruin, more than ably shows.
Blue Ruin is one of those rare films that sneaks upon you like a celluloid ninja disguised as a pleasant shepherdess or burnt out hippy sitting quietly in the Californian sunshine, for the first five minutes you believe the film is about something else entirely and then on the turn of the most brutal of dishevelled dice, the danger opens its bleary eyes and sets on the course of unkempt revenge. There isn’t a single part of you that doesn’t recognise the fact just how superbly your imagination had been duped and when the credits finally roll you sit there with other audience members in quiet repose and tousled contemplation for a minute and think wow that was pretty good.
Dwight looks for all the world to be a mild man, that same burnt out hippy now content to steal a bath from unsuspecting population when their focus is averted, happy to pick up other people’s trash from the beach and sleep night after night for years in the back of bust up wreck of a car, however like us all he holds a secret, one that scares him and one that suggests to kick the abused will only lead to a safe synapse cracking and vengeance being sought.
Filmed with glorious appeal, the drained look of cinema ahead of full blood transfusion, Macon Blair captures the feel of a man who has lived on the edge of his emotions for years with such stunning authenticity that it makes you so in awe of his capacity that despite what comes up in the film, you cannot help but root for the American underdog. This is what it essentially is, the underdog, kicked, abused and with the one thing taken away from him that kept the insanity from spilling out made real. The war between the haves and those who take and those who seemingly have no way to retaliate but who in the end take the one thing they can in terms of payback.
It would have to be a sensational thing for it to happen but if Blue Ruin won any type of major award then it will have fully deserved it. A film dipped into the outer edges of a masterpiece and using the gold that seeps silently into its drama produces brutal cinematic judgement.
Ian D. Hall