Recencies van critici

Blue Ruin fabricates an intriguingly halcyon atmosphere of ambiguity and mystery against a backdrop of America’s gaping wealth divide... Saulnier effectively fuses ambivalence and suspense with a healthy slice of empathy to create his unique tale of 21st century retribution.

No-one working out of Hollywood would allow an unprepossessing type [as Blair] to topline a film even half this tense, but Saulnier takes the risk, and is rewarded for so doing: Blair's responses are still sufficiently raw to convince as both a guy trying to clean up his mess, and one might well have got into such a mess in the first place.

Blue Ruin is a very good movie when it closely involves itself in specific tasks—the practical problem of removing a crossbow bolt from the meat of your thigh, say, or of trying to get the lock off of a stolen handgun. When making the leap from minutiae to universal truths, however, the movie goes tumbling into the gap between.

For all the expert build-and-release of tension and Blair's heartbreaking performance... as the film goes on there is also a feeling that ultimately it can't have it both ways, that we can't be both inside and outside Dwight's fateful mission. Saulnier, impressively, has evidently thought this out, for the final confrontation brings in another set of family photographs, jolting us (and Dwight) into recognition of just how far he's strayed from the hearth and home that shaped him.

An intelligently subversive film about the corrupting power of violence and the awful mechanics of killing, Blue Ruin both replicates and reinvents the narrative tropes of enduringly (un)satisfying cinematic cliches to impressively disorientating effect.

Blair excels at conveying a highly specialist form of despair as Dwight, who after a shave and outfit change shuffles around like an unhappy office stooge compelled to violence by an aberration of destiny. There is a disconnect between his original character and the rote villains (a family of revolting hicks anyone?) that reflects the marriage between originality and banality in the film as a whole.

Lean, mean and grippingly disciplined... literally ever shot [in Blue Ruin] feels chosen with care, framed and weighted to serve the story with precision... It’s also the rare one — take note, Quentin Tarantino — that absolutely justifies revenge as a dramatic motor, by switching it on and having it careen, instantly and irreversibly, out of control.

An exhilarating astonishment... The world doesn’t need another empty genre exercise. But as “Blue Ruin” reminds us, it can always use more filmmakers of Saulnier’s resourcefulness, sensitivity and quiet assurance.

With this arty, low-budget thriller, writer-director Jeremy Saulnier creates a pungent aesthetic from disparate elements of the American past; the story evokes the Hatfield-McCoy feud, the small-town settings look as if they were built in the mid-20th century, and the grim tone and regional flavor recall certain exploitation films of the 1970s. Saulnier makes impressive use of silence and slow camera movements, allowing the suspense to simmer until violence seems practically inevitable.

Brilliantly shot and staged by director-cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier (who also wrote the script), the film locates the sweet spot between poised art cinema and exploitation-flick pandering and hits it over and over again; what keeps Blue Ruin from simply being a bludgeoning experience is Saulnier's cleverness in knowing precisely how and when to throw his haymakers.

Teetering between arousing our sympathies and our disgust, Dwight becomes a complex figure, and the film grows from a simple revenge tale into a character-based drama. Blue Ruin is a confident venture that smartly doles out its story in pieces, leaving the audience to happily follow its trail of breadcrumbs.

Stingy with details and dialogue, but more than generous with atmosphere, this seductively photographed thriller (written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier, who also wielded the camera) sells its empty calories with great skill.