Josh Reviews Vengeance

B.J. Novak wrote, directed and stars in Vengeance.  He plays Ben, an arrogant, self-absorbed young New York journalist.  One night he gets a call from a distraught guy in Texas, telling Ben his girlfriend was murdered.  Turns out the young woman, Abilene, was just someone Ben had hooked up with once, not his girlfriend.  But her whole family somehow thinks he was her boyfriend, and Ben is persuaded to fly to Texas for her funeral.  Abilene died of a drug overdose, but her brother Ty (Boyd Holbrook) is convinced that she was murdered by a drug-dealer.  After meeting Ty and the rest of Abilene’s gregarious Texan family, Ben becomes convinced he could make a podcast about them and the whole situation, one that would be the type of metaphor for America that he’s been searching for.

Vengeance kicks off with a terrific song over the opening sequence that’s a rollicking salute to red Solo cups, and then we get a fantastic, hilarious sequence in which we see Ben (Mr. Novak) and his friend John (John Mayer) at a party, acting like a bunch of total schmucks.  It was great and the movie had hooked me in.  But then it took a while for me to figure out what sort of movie this was going to be.  It’s funny, but it’s not a yuk-a-minute romp.  (That opening scene with Ben and John is the funniest scene in the movie.)  When Ben arrives in Texas and starts to get to know Abilene’s family, I was a little concerned that some of the jokes at these Texans’ expense were a little condescending.  But thankfully, Ben is more the target of the film’s mockery than these Texans.

I quote enjoyed Vengeance.  I’m impressed by what Mr. Novak has created here.  It’s quite a showcase for him.  The direction is strong and the script is sharp.  He’s great in the lead role, striking the important balance between allowing Ben to be quite unlikable at many points in the film, while also allowing us to maintain some empathy for him and also enjoy watching this movie in which he’s the lead and in pretty much every scene.

Mr. Novak also demonstrates a strong eye for casting, as the ensemble he’s assembled around him is terrific.  Issa Rae is fantastic as Eloise, Ben’s boss and producer back in New York.  In the hands of a weaker actress, the movie might have deflated every time it cut away from the main story in Texas to check in on Eloise back in New York.  But Ms. Rae has a phenomenal on-screen presence and I loved all of her scenes.  Boyd Holbrook is phenomenal as Abilene’s brother Ty.  I’ve seen Mr. Holbrook in several other films (including Logan and The Predator), but this performance is worlds above anything I’ve previously seen him do.  He’s able to create in Ty someone who we can laugh at in some scenes, but also someone who we quickly grow to love and care for.  At least I did!  I loved this dude, and I was rooting for him throughout the film.  When he feels betrayed by Ben late in the film (in the confrontation in the Whataburger parking lot), my heart broke for him. J. Smith-Cameron brings a lot of dignity to the role of Abilene’s mother Sharon Shaw, and Louanne Stephens is fun as Granny.  Isabella Amara, Dove Cameron, and Eli Abrams Bickel bring a lot of life and personality to Abilene’s siblings Paris, K.C., and Mason (otherwise known as “El Stupido”).  I appreciate that the film gave the space for each one of these characters to stand out and be developed as interesting individuals.  Then there is Ashton Kutcher, who plays Quinten Sellers, a Texan music producer who works with many young kids, including Abilene.  The film plays a neat trick on the audience in that, when Mr. Kutcher first appears, I thought his character would be a joke… which is exactly what Ben first things as well.  But it turns out there’s more to Quinten than first appears.  Mr. Kutcher is terrific in the film, magnetic to watch.  He’s tasked with delivering two lengthy but critically important monologues, and he crushes those scenes and makes his speeches sound very natural.  I was impressed.

Mr. Novak has a lot on his mind in this film.  The film picks on some easy targets, from self-absorbed New York white people who want to be podcasters to hick Texans who enjoy Frito pies.  But those jokes are fun, and there’s more to the film than just that.  Mr. Novak has a lot more that he wants to say about the world we live in, the way we behave and the things we care about.  (He’s like his character Ben in that respect, though there’s more to Mr. Novak’s ideas than the ones Ben has, at least at the start of the film.)  I appreciate the depth this gives this film, even though there were some moments (particularly in the film’s final 15 minutes) in which I thought Mr. Novak perhaps hit the nail slightly too hard on the head in these areas.

(Frankly, the film’s final 15 minutes were the one place where the film slightly lost me.  I’m going to be vague here because I don’t want too SPOIL anything, though if you plan to see this film you might want to skip this paragraph so you can go in entirely clean.  I’ll just say that I thought the ending veered a little too much into “show don’t tell” territory, in which many of the film’s themes wind up getting spelled out in a long speech.  And I’m not sure I believed Ben would take the action he does in the end.  I’m also not quite sure I found that act to be as heroic as I think the film intends it to be.  It crosses a moral boundary that I found to be disturbing… and I also couldn’t help but think about how Ben’s act would have also had the ripple effect of throwing Eloise and all of their co-workers under the bus, wasting a lot of their time and effort.)

While Vengeance depicts some gentle mockery of true-crime podcasts, the film itself also winds up being an effective murder mystery.  I enjoyed the way the story unfolded, as we meet various characters and theories and have to sort out, along with Ben, what possibilities might have merit and what are red herrings.

I enjoyed the way Vengeance plays with genres (murder mystery, fish out of water comedy, character study) and I appreciated the edge its humor has.  There’s a particularly potent scene in the middle of the film in which Ben winds up getting humiliated at a local rodeo event.  There’s a lot at play here; issues of class, politics, wealth, and religion.  Ben is an outsider for all those reasons.  But the film doesn’t take easy sides (there’s both mockery and empathy for the Texans in the crowd and for Ben), nor does it create simple straw-man caricatures.  There’s more to Ben than an arrogant, clueless spoiled New Yorker and there’s more to all of the Texan characters we meet than empty-headed red-necks.  I appreciated that approach.

Vengeance is not a grand statement on the state of the Red-Blue divide in this country.  But it’s a clever and entertaining story with interesting characters and some interesting points to make.  I enjoyed it.

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