Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin is a revenge film filled with enough unpredictability to keep your attention and violence that serves the story rather than being gratuitous – though it does, at times, make for difficult viewing. Not for the faint-hearted, the audience is forced to watch a revenge spree clumsily executed by the inexperienced main character, and all that it bloodily entails.

Macon Blair plays lead Dwight, a detached loner, homeless and living hand-to-mouth out of an old Pontiac on an abandoned beach until some news calls him home and motivates him to seek vengeance for past crimes against his family. The plot thickens when he realises his car is registered at his sister's address and his actions may have endangered her young family. Blair’s performance is emotive and convincing, and he carries the film for large segments without dialogue, framed by the stark, haunting cinematography.

Blue Ruin is New York filmmaker Jeremy Saulnier’s writing and directing debut, and an ambitious one at that, with crowdfunding topping-up production costs. Saulnier delivers his tense, bloody film with such swagger that it earned him the International Critics Prize at Cannes last year. [Yasmin Ali]