Blue Ruin at its core is a film about revenge. Delivering that sweet, cold revenge to someone who has wronged you in the past. In fact, going into this I thought that I, the viewer, will receive the delicious feeling of giving out vengeance to that certain group of people. In the end though, that's not what I felt. This movie was totally different and I feel, in its entirety, somewhat conflicted.
The strongest point this film has is its violence. The violence and the blood are dealt with and handled extremely well. It is very realistic and you could actually feel the character's physical pain while he's enduring the wound through proper facial expressions and acting. It is also not gratuitous to the point where there are just smashing heads everywhere; the violence is very constricted and it only happens for a good reason which I found to be pretty valid.
Where this film falters is within the plot. This is a revenge tale yes but what I had a problem with were the characters, specifically with our main character, Dwight. We are not given a whole lot of backstory on why he's giving out vengeance on this troop, we just see him work in action. Although he explained why, his justification is quite simple and I'd wanted to see more complexity with his character. The way he does his revenge is done internally in which we truly see his hatred for these people basing on the actions he did but we didn't really get a good reason to why he's doing that.
In addition to that, there's not much dialogue. It's just like the violence in which things are restricted to a certain level. The absence of dialogue really makes me question the characters and what they're doing. I didn't feel for any of these characters just because of that. This is a quiet, cold-hearted revenge story with not a lot of heart for its characters.
It's hard to talk about Blue Ruin due to my conflicted emotions about it. The violence is great but on the other hand the plot didn't have a lot of complexity and the characters not a lot of heart to the point that we view them as sadistic murderers. Its all over the place, really and that's a supreme distraction to my viewing of it.
The strongest point this film has is its violence. The violence and the blood are dealt with and handled extremely well. It is very realistic and you could actually feel the character's physical pain while he's enduring the wound through proper facial expressions and acting. It is also not gratuitous to the point where there are just smashing heads everywhere; the violence is very constricted and it only happens for a good reason which I found to be pretty valid.
Where this film falters is within the plot. This is a revenge tale yes but what I had a problem with were the characters, specifically with our main character, Dwight. We are not given a whole lot of backstory on why he's giving out vengeance on this troop, we just see him work in action. Although he explained why, his justification is quite simple and I'd wanted to see more complexity with his character. The way he does his revenge is done internally in which we truly see his hatred for these people basing on the actions he did but we didn't really get a good reason to why he's doing that.
In addition to that, there's not much dialogue. It's just like the violence in which things are restricted to a certain level. The absence of dialogue really makes me question the characters and what they're doing. I didn't feel for any of these characters just because of that. This is a quiet, cold-hearted revenge story with not a lot of heart for its characters.
It's hard to talk about Blue Ruin due to my conflicted emotions about it. The violence is great but on the other hand the plot didn't have a lot of complexity and the characters not a lot of heart to the point that we view them as sadistic murderers. Its all over the place, really and that's a supreme distraction to my viewing of it.