Revenge requires research. It’s safe to say — the bigger the revenge, the bigger the research and planning. If somebody ruins your life and the best you can come up with is, “steak knife in a public bathroom,” you’re not going about this the right way. I’m confident in that assessment even through my (thankfully) relative inexperience.
Dwight (Macon Blair) has no life. When not breaking into houses to use the shower, he bathes in the ocean and steals food from the dumpster outside a small Virginia beach amusement park. He sleeps in his car. How did he get this way? Wade Cleland killed his parents. We don’t find that part out until later. Here’s what we know – dumpster guy gets informed that Wade is getting out of prison and decides then and there to even the score … and his ability to execute his “plan” is equal to the depth of research that went into it. And yet, Dwight is successful.
Blue Ruin is a Hatfield-McCoy kinda tale. Two curious thing happen after Dwight murders Wade – the first is that his escape goes awry and he ends up stealing the post-prison limo; abandoning such leads to the youngest Cleland telling him, “I don’t think he did it.” Well, that’s super, huh? The better happening, however, is that the Clelands don’t report Wade’s death; they don’t want justice; they want revenge. Oh, what a tangled web we weave … when we live out of a dumpster.
There never is a moment in this film in which I didn’t think Dwight was in over his head and that’s the best part of Blue Ruin. Here’s a man, a very weak man, who fell apart when his parents were murdered. He 
has presumably lived for years with neither ambition nor grace, content to revisit his tortured thoughts alone away from confrontation and, for the most part, humanity. Yet, there is a part of him that needs revenge. And he gives in to the dark impulse even though he has no freaking idea what he’s doing. There is no way this guy is still alive by the end of this film, right?
And this is what works in Blue Ruin – the philosophical question of: “What would bring you to commit a crime for which you have no skill set?” and the practical question of: “How does this lone idiot protect whatever remains that is dear to him?” Neither of these is a particularly deep thought, but I was satisfied with the thrill of hunt nonetheless.
♪Hot summer days
In somebody’s home bathtub
I lie around
Wondering if I’ll indulge
And have cat food for lunch
Cop voices are saying
What do they say?
Cleland is out on parole
Hey look I’ve found purpose
So I’m going to get out and roll
It’s a Blue. Blue Ruin
Living my life all alone
There’s much trouble brewin’
Hope is gone
For almost everyone♫
Rated R, 90 Minutes
D: Jeremy Saulnier
W: Jeremy Saulnier
Genre: Grudgery
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Venge-o-philes
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Justice system believers
♪ Parody inspired by “Cruel Summer”
