‘Vengeance’ Film Review
by Will Lindus
In his feature film directorial debut, B.J Novak - yeah, you probably know him as that guy from THE OFFICE, or maybe from INGLORIOUS BASTERDS - pulls triple duty as the writer, director, and lead performer. VENGEANCE follows Novak as a writer named Ben from The New Yorker who is invited to Texas to the funeral of a girl named Abilene who he hooked up with a few times, but with whom he shared no real feelings. Still, Abbie’s family mistakes Ben for her boyfriend, and begs him to help solve the mystery of what they believe to be her murder - a perfect excuse for Ben to record a ‘Serial’-esque podcast about small town life and the conspiracy theories which he feels fuels rural denizens.
One of the remarkable things that B.J. Novak captures in VENGEANCE is the undeniable feeling of life in a small Texas town. Here, people dream of bigger, glitzier lives far from home, but will defend their hometowns with a fierce sense of pride. Here, Whataburger is king, and any slander against this holiest of fast food establishments will not be tolerated. Here, it isn’t a matter of supporting your local Texas college football team; it’s about supporting the RIGHT Texas college football team. And here, the opioid epidemic ravages small communities, with law enforcement jurisdictions and Texas-state politics playing ping-pong with the lives of its citizens.
Novak plays Ben as the right kind of asshole; he is shallow and narcissistic, and he views the people of the small Texas town he visits as beneath him. Yet there is an emptiness in him that Novak allows to be filled with meaning - whether ill-intentioned or not - as Ben spends more time in this foreign land. Other performance standouts include Boyd Holbrook as Abilene’s singularly focused older brother, Ashton Kutcher as a savvy recording artist who understands - and perhaps exploits - the mentality of the town where he has set up shop, and Lio Tipton as Abilene, who only appears in photographs and YouTube video clips. Each of these characters is a piece of the puzzle that informs Ben’s understanding of this community, of how Abilene fits into it, and perhaps even his own culpability.
The mystery trappings are, unfortunately though not tragically, fairly easy to clock from a mile away. For as much time as the film spends on the question of whodunnit? - or if itwasevendone - the revelations don’t pack enough punch for a compelling payoff on their own. That said, I don’t know how much this truly matters. At its core, this is a story about Texas, about a girl from Texas who was swallowed whole by its worst traits, and about an outsider who learns to see its best traits. And as a Texan who sometimes has a love-hate relationship with this state I call home, this resonates for me on a very personal level.
Also, Whataburger slaps, this movie gets that fact 1000% right.
3.5 out of 5 Bear Paws