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Blue Ruin Movie Review

Blue Ruin is a 2014 thriller film directed by Jeremy Saulnier and starring Macon Blair. It’s a very mediocre genre film that simply did not work.

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“I’d forgive you if you were crazy,

but you’re not. You’re weak“

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Dwight Evans, a drifter, learns that Wade, the man who killed his parents, is released from prison. He visits his hometown in order to exact revenge on Wade and seek closure. This movie was renowned as among the best indie releases of its respective year, but upon watching it I found it to be immensely overrated and a big letdown.

I am simply not a fan of Jeremy Saulnier as a director. I find his movies devoid of any purpose or sophistication. They are just genre pieces that are brainless and not even effective at thrilling audiences as was also the case with his ‘Green Room’. This movie isn’t as bad as that frustrating flick, but it’s still wildly mediocre.

Macon Blair is fine in the main role, but far from great as this actor lacks the charisma necessary to pull off this role. Other performers and characters fared even worse as they were thoroughly underdeveloped and underutilized. But our main character is also uninteresting and barely developed himself, which was the main issue here as the movie is basically a one-man show.

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Blue Ruin is your standard revenge story that was stripped to its bare essentials, which I appreciated to a degree, but what I don’t like is that it didn’t thrill me with said essentials. The violent scenes were too gory and because I didn’t care for this guy, I found myself not being involved in his story at all. The movie is very well shot, scored and edited, but it’s also mostly devoid of dialogue for the worse as it made watching it boring.