Blue Ruin

Blue Ruin centres around Dwight, who lives rough in a seaside town, but gets some news that suddenly triggers a sense of purpose and he sets off on a mission to rural Virginia which stirs up a hornets nest of trouble. While Dwight turns out to be resourceful under pressure, he is not as gun happy as his enemies and he can't always think his way out of danger.

There is a sense of mystery in Blue Ruin because all the character know the back story so there is no reason for them to explain anything to each other, leaving the audience eager to interpret any scraps of information about the past to make sense of what they are watching. This is a refreshing change from most films where plots tend to be over explained or signalled.

This is very much a solo piece. Dwight is effectively in every scene with other characters arriving to help or hurt him. As a homeless man Dwight is an unusual choice for an everyman hero, but as we see him struggling against the odds and with various moral dilemmas that are usually glossed over in thrillers he becomes someone we can identify with. All the loose ends are very neatly tied up in the final scene as if to say to the audience - keep your soft city ways this is how we do things in Virginia.

It looks like Blue Ruin was partially crowd funded.

Ian's rating 3/5