Vengeance: An Imperfect Flourish of Talent

A wannabe cowboy vigilante, a suave recording artist, and a culturally-out-of-touch journalist pretending to be a Texas Longhorns fan walk into a bar. I promise you, the punchline to this joke is really good, but I'll let director, writer, and star B.J. Novak and his crew tell you about it, because he and his movie are probably a lot better at telling jokes than I ever will be. And though the flaws of Vengeance are more apparent than I had hoped, what impressed me most about this movie is the obvious raw and unfiltered talent it displays. To make a simile that might appeal to all you drinkers out there, if Fargo is a 29-year-old fine wine, then Vengeance is an unrefined but skillfully made private brew you'll find in Ted's backwoods distillery. It's not as fully-processed a product as some other neo-westerns, but what it does well, it does very well indeed, bringing an obvious passion that has been sorely missing from movies we in our culture accept at mainstream.

Vengeance decisively marks Novak as both a directorial and performative threat to be watched with a huge emphasis on some niche technical prowesses, most notably excellently-penned dialogue. The wit that drips from this movie's humor is nothing short of astounding, the delivery of the subtle jokes magnificently funny. I was legitimately laughing out loud only about five minutes into Vengeance, and though a decent number of its funniest bits are frontloaded, it does ensure that right off the bat, you are on the side of and rooting for what is surely one of the funniest movies I've seen in a long, long time. I'm more of a dramas man relative to comedies when it comes to picking what to watch for movie night, but Vengeance isn't only skillfully made - no, I dare say I really enjoyed it as well, in large part due to its nearly unmatched comedic wit.

If you've read my blog for any time, you may know that I'm a big fan of a simple story told well. Basically, you could sum up the plot of Vengeance like so: "A completely terrible and morally-devoid man named Ben gets involved in the foolhardy revenge plot of the family of a woman he slept with but doesn't remember after her suspected murder." It's not exactly an elaborately tangled tale of deceit, but the fundamental and often erroneous assumptions of the characters in this movie - combined with their relative lack of brains - make for an incredibly amusing experience. And in a similar vein, you might expect that the movie would treat Ben's obvious moral shortcomings as mere comedy material - and don't get me wrong, there are jokes aplenty to be had here about his appalling ethical code. However, one of my favorite things about Vengeance is it's unexpected and surprisingly sincere critiques of such a selfish, detached lifestyle. It takes some surprisingly thoughtful shots at a lot of things we take for granted, asking us a lot of questions before demanding our consideration of possible answers. What's more, Ben becomes a far more complex character than I was expecting by the time the curtain was falling on Vengeance, and even if it might not have the depth of a hard-boiled drama, this movie really surprised me with the sincerity it treated it's cast with, despite being a comedy to the core of it's being.

Now, to levy some complaints against Vengeance, it's actual plot is extremely loose, acting as a showcase of strong dialogue and acting more than anything else, and it doesn't approach it's story with enough intention of actually telling it. What's more, Novak writes himself into a corner near the turn of the third act, and can't figure out how to play his revelations with a strength matching the build-up. It's major weaknesses sit just beneath the surface of Vengeance for much of it's runtime, but briefly boil over near the end. But nonetheless, the freshness of this movie carries it far beyond these problems. There's one quote that I would point at to sum up it's modus operandi: "The problem is that you get all of these bright, creative lights and nowhere to plug in their creative energy." In many ways, I think this is what's different about Vengeance and its movie-making approach. Its tonal shifts are daring and possibly shouldn't have worked. I don't know what's crazier - this movie's dedication to such fundamental tonal shifts or the fact that they actually pulled them off.

If you give an artist the freedom to make art, you'll get something you didn't sign up for or expect, and that's a knife that cuts both ways. The quality will vary wildly from art piece to art piece, but you can be assured that you will see something you haven't seen before. Vengeance is an imperfect movie that seems hung up on the things that make it special, but I can assure you that it is indeed special in many ways. It's got the wit of a Coen Brothers movie, the philosophical mind of a Nolan flick, and a surprising amount of heart to go with its mouth and its head. Is it a bit conceited of B.J. Novak to write, direct, and star in the movie? Probably. But is his vision brought vibrantly and skillfully to life because of it? You bet.

Go Longhorns.

Vengeance - 7/10

Proverbs 10:9