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‘Vengeance’ Review: A Dish Best Served With Frito Pie

In this comedic culture-war thriller, B.J. Novak, who wrote and directed, plays an aspiring podcaster chasing a true-crime story in West Texas.

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vengeance movie review new yorker

By A.O. Scott

Ben Manalowitz, who writes for The New Yorker (he’s played by B.J. Novak, who has been published in its pages ), wants to break into podcasting. “Not every white guy in America needs to have a podcast,” someone tells him, but this white guy sees the platform as a perfect stage for his ambitions and his big thoughts about America.

Ben has a theory about the divided, discontented state of the country. Eloise (Issa Rae), a receptive, well-connected, somewhat skeptical producer, tells him that what he needs is a story. Their brief debate about the relative merits of theories and stories distills a conundrum that will be familiar to journalists and other writers. Are we looking for facts or ideas? Characters or historical forces? Generalities or particulars? These questions are the key to “Vengeance,” which tries to have it both ways by reverse engineering its story about the treachery of storytelling from a theory about the danger of theorizing.

Novak, who wrote and directed the movie, has his own thoughts about America, subtler than Ben’s but not necessarily any more convincing. “Vengeance,” while earnest, thoughtful and quite funny in spots, demonstrates just how difficult it can be to turn political polarization and culture-war hostility into a credible narrative. Its efforts shouldn’t be dismissed, even though it’s ultimately too clever for its own good, and maybe not quite as smart as it thinks it is.

The same could be said about Ben, who is also, at least at the start of the movie, the object of Novak’s most brutal, knowing satire. We first meet him at a party on a terrace with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge, where he and a pal spin elaborate philosophical justifications for their cynical, transactional approach to sex and romance. The way Ben intellectualizes his own shallowness feels so accurate — and so repellent — that you may wonder if the film can redeem him enough to make another 90 minutes in his company anything but insufferable.

But what looks like yet another self-conscious, New York-centric satire of white male media-elite entitlement turns into something else. A few other things, really, including a fish-out-of-water comedy and a twisty detective story, with Ben as both fish and gumshoe.

A late-night phone call dispatches him to West Texas, where an aspiring singer he has hooked up with a few times in New York has been found dead under a pump jack in an oil field. Ben knew her as Abby, though he might not have known that it was short for Abilene. (In haunting, posthumously viewed video clips, she’s played by Lio Tipton.) Ben’s number was in her cellphone, and her family is under the impression that he was the love of her life.

Ben flies out to the funeral, where he is welcomed into Abilene’s big Texas family. There are two sisters (Isabella Amara and Dove Cameron) also named for cities, a no-nonsense mom (J. Smith-Cameron), a salty grandma (Louanne Stephens, who also played a Texas granny on “Friday Night Lights”) and two brothers, the younger of whom (Eli Abrams Bickel) answers to El Stupido.

The older one, Ty (Boyd Holbrook), dragoons Ben into the scheme that gives the movie its title and its momentum. Ty is convinced that Abilene’s death was the result of a shadowy, nefarious conspiracy, and that her killers need to be dealt with. In his feverish ramblings, Ben hears an opportunity for audio gold. True crime. A first-person meditation on American Life. An inquiry into the nature of storytelling and the slipperiness of truth. Eloise agrees — “a dead white girl: the holy grail of podcasting” — and ships him the necessary recording equipment.

The best part of “Vengeance” is the middle, during which Novak humanizes cultural stereotypes — including Ben himself — without losing his sense of humor. It turns out that people are complicated, and that they can surprise you. This is the kind of insight that is easily oversold, since it depends on an assumption that the audience thinks otherwise. But Ben’s superficial self-awareness is replaced by active curiosity (he is a writer, after all), and he comes to feel genuine tenderness for Ty, Granny and the rest. He also meets other local characters who knew Abilene and who aren’t who they seem to be, including a drug dealer (Zach Villa) and a mystical record producer (Ashton Kutcher).

For a while, glib sociology and facile plotting take a back seat to sharp, low-key humanist comedy. Novak, who has published a collection of short stories and a children’s book , is a deft writer and (as we know from “The Office” ) a nimble ensemble player. A sitcom version of “Vengeance,” with Ben embedded in Abilene’s hometown, might be worth a few seasons on a streaming platform, and for about 45 minutes the movie functions as a pretty good pilot for that.

Ben develops an appreciation for Whataburger and Frito pie, learns a hard lesson about college football fandom and discovers that rural red-staters and urban blue-staters share certain aspirations (fame, self-expression) and cultural reference points (Anton Chekhov, Liam Neeson) while remaining out of sync on other matters. It’s when dealing — or not — with those matters that “Vengeance” turns coy and skittish. Gun culture and the opioid crisis receive cursory attention, but the movie mostly wishes away the sand in the gears of the American experiment.

Nobody has much to say about politics, race, religion, immigration or any of the other stuff we are always fighting about. Maybe Novak’s point is that, face to face and heart to heart, we don’t really fight as much as our social media avatars and elected representatives do. That’s a comforting idea, but this movie’s sophisticated theorizing and busy storytelling can’t disguise its essential banality.

Vengeance Rated R. Guns, drugs and digital audio. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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vengeance movie review new yorker

"Vengeance" sounds like the title of an action thriller. There have been films with that name before. But although vengeance is discussed in "Vengeance"—the first feature from writer/director/star B.J. Novak, co-star and co-writer of the American version of "The Office"—it has a lot more on its mind. Too much, probably. 

The story begins in earnest when New Yorker writer and aspiring public intellectual Ben Manalowitz (Novak) gets a call at his Manhattan apartment late one night from Ty Shaw ( Boyd Holbrook ), who lives in one of the flattest backwaters in West Texas, a small town five hours' drive from Abilene, which is two hours and forty minutes from Dallas. Ty is calling to tell Ben that his sister, Ben's girlfriend—who is oddly also named Abilene, Abby for short—has died. 

Ben doesn't have a girlfriend named Abby. He's a player who hooks up with many women. But a quick check of his phone confirms that he did indeed have sex with an aspiring singer named Abby ( Lio Tipton ) a few times and then forgot about her. Somehow he ends up letting himself be talked into traveling to Abby's hometown, attending her funeral, and commiserating with her grieving family, which also includes her younger sisters Paris ( Isabella Amara ) and Kansas City ( Dove Cameron ), her kid brother El Stupido (Elli Abrams Beckel), and her mother Sharon (J. Smith-Cameron). Then Ty tells Ben that Abby was murdered, probably by a Mexican drug dealer named Sancholo ( Zach Villa ), and asks if he'll help the family seek, well, you know.

Ben is a narcissist who seems to view every relationship and experience as a way of raising his status as a writer and quasi-celebrity, so it seems unbelievable at first that he'd travel to Texas to attend the funeral of a woman he didn't really know. But the notion begins to seem more plausible once he starts talking to the family and slotting them into his prefabricated East Coast media-industrial-complex notions of "red state" and "blue state" people, and spinning his theories about temporal dislocation. Modern technology, he says, allows every person to exist in every moment except the present if they so choose. The desire for vengeance, we are told, is exclusively a backward-looking urge.

Intrigued by the possibility of writing the equivalent of a great American novel in the form of a podcast (he even name-checks Truman Capote's In Cold Blood ) Ben decides to stick around to gather material for an audio series, which will be created under the supervision of his friend Eloise, a New York-based podcast editor for a National Public Radio-like organization. (As Eloise, Issa Rae works wonders with a thinly written role.)

If Ben's creative vision sounds like the kind of navel-gazing blather that you'd hear on a true crime podcast in which an actual person's murder becomes a springboard for brunchy rumination on law and truth and the nature of yadda yadda  by a group of Ivy League college graduates based in Brooklyn, well, Ben is aware that he's sliding towards that cliché—and so is Eloise, who early on makes a joke to the effect that Ben is the only white man in America without a podcast. And yet, true to media form, they embrace the templates, tropes, and clichés anyway. 

Unfortunately, so does the movie. Like "The Daily Show" and its many imitators—and like Jon Stewart's recent film " Irresistible "—this is a movie that chastises its protagonist and the "red state" people he engages with for failing to look beyond the clichés they're fed by their own self-enclosed media loops, while at the same time dining out on them. On one side of the great divide is a nation of "coastal elites" (driven by Harvard-educated Jewish people like Ben) who name-drop cultural tidbits that they learned in college and never revisited; sneer at monogamy, and think everything between the coasts that's not a Top Ten city is a barbaric wasteland. The inhabitants of said wasteland are people whose favorite restaurant is Whataburger and have several guns in the house for every person (including the kids) and use them to settle their differences rather than calling 911. 

Intriguingly, though, even as "Vengeance" checks box after box on the op-ed chart of American shorthand, it also presents a number of characters with idiosyncrasies and layers that we've never seen in a movie before. Ben himself is quite a piece of work, and it's to Novak's credit that we eventually dig past Ben's buzzwords and NPR-ready voice and see the character's self-loathing (and, it would appear, the filmmaker's) at realizing that he's a prisoner of the same limited thinking he decries. (Ben often plays more like the protagonist of a French comedy than an American one—or like the characters played by Canadian satirist Ken Finkleman in "The Newsroom" and "More Tears.") There's little discussion of racial grievance as a motivation for politics in the film, and nobody mentions Trump, Greg Abbott, or the transformation of Texas into an authoritarian nation-state. The movie takes the audience into a minefield but tactfully declines to point out most of the mines. But these threats lurk under the surface, and they do occasionally explode—particularly when the drug epidemic that's decimating white middle-America comes to the forefront of the story.

The supporting cast boasts a number of characters who seem one-note during their introductions but quickly assert their spiky individualism. Smith-Cameron seems underutilized at first, but becomes the emotional anchor of Ben's story, and her final scene is powerful. There are several terrific scenes involving Abby's onetime record producer Quinten Sellers, kind of a Phil Spector of West Texas who lives and works in a combination home, studio, and cult compound, and regales his talent and hangers-on with monologues about time, space, individuality, art, drugs, and hedonism that Marlon Brando or Dennis Hopper might have delivered in a 1970s American art film. Sellers is played by  Ashton Kutcher in what might be a career-best performance. With his polite but eerie intensity, ten-gallon white cowboy hat, and lanky frame, it's as if Sam Shepard had come back to play Col. Walter Kurtz.

Novak is a thoughtful writer with a lot of things to say about the United States of America in the year 2022. The problem is that he seems determined to say all of them in one feature film. The result is a jumbled, fitfully amusing, occasionally fascinating effort, but one that shows promise even when it's stumbling over its ambition and falling prey to some of the same stereotypes about "red" and "blue" (or reactionary and progressive) America that it keeps intimating that Americans need to get beyond. The first 15 minutes are borderline awful, but the movie gets better and more surprising as it goes, and the final act is impressive in its determination not to give the audience what it wants. Novak is famous enough that he could've cobbled together an onanistic two hours of nothing and still gotten into South by Southwest with it, but he decided to try to make a real movie. 

Now playing in theaters.

vengeance movie review new yorker

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor-at-Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

vengeance movie review new yorker

  • B.J. Novak as Ben Manalowitz
  • Boyd Holbrook as Ty Shaw
  • J. Smith-Cameron as
  • Lio Tipton as
  • Dove Cameron as Kansas City
  • Issa Rae as
  • Ashton Kutcher as
  • Isabella Amara as Paris
  • Hilda Rasula
  • Plummy Tucker
  • Finneas O'Connell

Cinematographer

  • Lyn Moncrief

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‘Vengeance’ Review: B.J. Novak’s Terrific Directorial Debut Is a West Texas Murder Mystery That’s Like Preston Sturges Meets Film Noir Meets NPR

Novak introduces redneck stereotypes only to detonate them in a one-of-a-kind movie that's so wide awake and sharp-edged it marks the arrival of a potentially major filmmaker.

By Owen Gleiberman

Owen Gleiberman

Chief Film Critic

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Vengeance - Film Review - Critic's Pick

B.J. Novak ’s “ Vengeance ,” which premiered last night at the Tribeca Film Festival (it opens July 29), is an irresistible original — a heady, jaunty, witty-as-they-come tall tale that’s just grounded enough in the real world to carry you along. It’s at once an ominous heartland murder mystery; a culture-clash comedy that finds Ben Manalowitz (played by Novak), an acerbic New Yorker writer and podcaster, descending into the bleak depths of West Texas; and a meditation on blue state/red state values that gradually evolves into something larger — a cosmic riff on how the two sides of America are working, nearly in tandem, to tear the country apart.

Novak, an actor best known for his role on “The Office” (where he also served as a writer, executive producer, and director), brings off what could have been a rickety conceit as if he were holding the audience in the palm of his hand. “Vengeance,” which he wrote and directed (it’s his first feature), has been made with such confidence and verve, and it’s held together by a vision — of loss, ambition, addiction, conspiracy theory, and how we’re all victims of the contemporary image culture — that is so wide awake and sharp-edged, it marks the arrival of a potentially major filmmaker.

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After a prelude set on a dark-as-midnight Texas oil field, with murky hints of foul play, the film kicks off with Ben and his buddy, played by John Mayer, scoping out women at Soho House, exchanging tips on how to play the hookup game. In the space of four minutes, the attitudes they express about serial dating and “commitment” — a concept as foreign to them as some ritual from a distant galaxy — are put forth with a compact misanthropic assurance that makes us think we’re seeing some 21st-century version of “Swingers.” (I have no doubt that Novak could make that movie, and that it might be as good as “Swingers.”) The ritual phrase of agreement they keep saying is “a hundred percent,” as if they were sure of it all. “Vengeance,” among other things, is a comic poke at the fake armor of cosmopolitan male certainty.

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At the party, Ben makes a pitch to a podcast producer, Eloise, played with twinkling cynicism by Issa Rae, and we hear the intricate yet slightly annoying way his mind works. Ben’s theory that what’s actually fragmenting our lives is our newly controlled sense of time has much to be said for it. Yet we also can’t help but hear how in love he is with the sound of his own mind. He’s a brainiac narcissist, too full of theories, and Novak gives him a crackling surface and a saturnine depth. The actor, with his large eyes, whip-crack delivery, and glare of geek suspicion, would be well cast as Lou Reed. Yet in “Vengeance,” he makes Ben a thumbnail portrait of the new generation of New York writer careerists whose idealism is dunked in opportunism.

Ben has a date (when the woman arrives at his apartment, he greets her with a friendly “How’s book world?,” not realizing that she’s not the hookup from publishing). In the middle of the night, after they’re in bed, he’s awakened by a call from a scary-sounding Southern stranger, who tells Ben that his girlfriend is dead. This would be news to Ben, since the concept of a “girlfriend” is also from that distant galaxy. But he did know the young woman in question (they hooked up a few times), and before long he finds himself speaking at the funeral of Abilene Shaw (Lio Tipton), right next to a photo of her with a guitar (“She loved music. I know that”), in rural Texas.

Why would he even be there? You have to roll with that one (though it’s actually explained down the line). Ben meets Abby’s family members — her mother, granny, and two sisters, her little tyke of a brother, and her older brother, Ty (Boyd Holbrook), a wild-boy yokel who has decided that Abby was murdered and wants Ben to help him solve the crime. He wants his vengeance. All this seems, for a scene or two, like a very movie-ish setup. Ben is the kind of New Yorker for whom Texas is not a real place; to him, Texas is the Austin of “South-by.” And as we glimpse the family pickup truck, with its twin rifles mounted on the back window, we wonder if the movie is going to be some glib Manhattan-swell-among-the-gun-nuts, geek-out-of-water comedy.

It quickly transcends that. Novak introduces clichés and stereotypes only to detonate them — or, better yet, fill them in in ways that show us how the stereotypes are real and not real. Abby’s family members are a bunch of rednecks, but that doesn’t mean they’re dumb, or unworldly, or not plugged into the currents of urban technology. They’re characters who keep surprising us. Ben, sensing an opportunity, decides to stay and make a podcast out of Abby’s death, keeping his digital phone recorder on during every conversation. It will be like “In Cold Blood” for the age of progressive radio, with Ben as the murder investigator and reporter. “I will find this person,” he tells the family, “or this generalized societal force. And I will define it.” He titles the podcast “The Dead White Girl” (Eliose, back in New York, is editing and advising), and “Vengeance” turns into the story of an East Coast creative telling a tale of backwoods locals even as his own blindness becomes central to their story.

The film’s perceptions arrive as jokes, and vice versa, whether it’s Ben trying (and failing) to get Ty and the others to define why they love the WhatABurger fast-food chain beyond the fact that it’s always right there. Or Ben being hilariously outed at a rodeo for the Northern wimp he is. Or Abby’s sister Paris (Isabella Amara) accusing Ben of cultural appropriation, to which he responds that her use of the term “cultural appropriation” is an act of cultural appropriation (they’re both right). Or a local music producer named Quentin Sellers, played with dashingly sinister aplomb by Ashton Kutcher in a white cowboy suit, explaining how and why conspiracy mania took over the heartland. Was Abby killed, or did she die of an opioid overdose? That’s the mystery, and it’s resolved in a way that puts a haunting cast of mythology over the spiritual despair of Middle America.

In a good way, “Vengeance” makes up its own rules. It’s a one-of-a-kind movie, like a Preston Sturges comedy fused with the free-floating what’s-it-all-mean? dread of “Under the Silver Lake.” But this movie, unlike that one, has a pretty good idea of what it all means. It’s voiced by the film’s most brilliant and disturbing character, who explains, in a way that may blow your head open a little bit, why the very way our culture now dissects and explains everything has had the paradoxical effect of robbing anything and everything of meaning. It’s the death of communication not just by social media but by all media, and in “Vengeance” the way it plays out in the heartland, where indifference can be a form of hate, makes a statement that reverberates. In “Vengeance,” B.J. Novak proves a born storyteller with the rare gift of using a film to say something that intoxicates us.

Reviewed at Tribeca Festival, June 12, 2022. MPA Rating: R. Running time: 107 MIN.

  • Production: A Focus Features release of a Blumhouse production, in association with Divide/Conquer. Producers: Jason Blume, Adam Hendricks, Greg Gilreath. Executive producers: B.J. Novak, Leigh Kilton-Smith.
  • Crew: Director, writer: B.J. Novak. Camera: Lyn Moncrief. Editors: Andy Canny, Hilda Rasula, Plummy Tucker.
  • With: B.J. Novak, Boyd Holbrook, Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher, J. Smith-Cameron, Lio Tipton, Dove Cameron, Isabella Amara, Eli Abrams Bickel, Louanne Stephens, Zach Villa, Clint Obenchain.

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Ashton Kutcher, J. Smith-Cameron, Louanne Stephens, B.J. Novak, Boyd Holbrook, Isabella Amara, Issa Rae, Dove Cameron, and Eli Bickel in Vengeance (2022)

A writer from New York City attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her. A writer from New York City attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her. A writer from New York City attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her.

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Did you know

  • Trivia On an episode of the Office Ladies podcast, B.J. Novak said that he first got the idea for the film when he saw a poster for another film titled Vengeance at a film festival. He said that he was struck with the image of his face on a poster with that name on it, believing audiences would be surprised, since that's not the type of work he's known for.
  • Goofs At around 1h 2 mins, Monahans, TX is spelled Monohans on the map on the wall.

Sharon Shaw : It's all regrets. You run as fast as you can from the last regret and of course you are just running straight into the next one. That's life. It's all regrets. That's what they should say. No other way to be alive. It's all regrets. Make 'em count.

  • Connections Featured in Half in the Bag: I Love My Dad, Watcher and Vengeance (2022)
  • Soundtracks Red Solo Cup Written by Brett Beavers , Jimmy Beavers (as Jim Beavers), Brad Warren , Brett Warren Performed by Toby Keith Courtesy of Show Dog Nashville

User reviews 300

Twisty, better than expected fun.

  • lwatson-31708
  • Jul 28, 2022
  • How long is Vengeance? Powered by Alexa
  • July 29, 2022 (United States)
  • United States
  • Official site
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  • Albuquerque New Mexico, USA
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  • Jul 31, 2022
  • Runtime 1 hour 47 minutes

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Rent Vengeance on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV, or buy it on Fandango at Home, Prime Video, Apple TV.

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Writer-director-star B.J. Novak could have taken a sharper approach to this dark comedy's deeper themes, but if you're in the mood for a slyly smart mystery, Vengeance is yours.

Underneath its quirky premise, Vengeance has some interesting things to say about modern society.

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Review: B.J. Novak sends up media and looks for America in smart satire ‘Vengeance’

Three men in contemporary western attire amid snow flurries in the movie "Vengeance."

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“Vengeance,” the debut feature of writer-director-star B.J. Novak, opens with a scene of acidic social commentary that sets the tone for the smart satire of contemporary media culture that ensues. In a scene that targets the mating rituals of the urban-dwelling modern American cad interspersed into the opening credits with an almost jarring violence, Ben (Novak), a writer for the New Yorker, and the unlikely, sometimes unlikable, hero of “Vengeance,” parries back and forth with his friend John (played by singer John Mayer ) about their vapid dating lives.

As they debate the merits of seeing six women or three, question whether a cellphone contact labeled “Brunette Random House Party” refers to a woman met at at publishing event or just a “random house party,” and falsely declare that they’re not afraid of emotional intimacy, Novak does something important with his character: he first and foremost makes him a buffoon in this bracing setup that allows him to carefully thread the needle on his American tale.

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In “Vengeance,” Novak sets his sights on lampooning the big-city media types who go chasing stories in middle America and return with observations from the “flyover states” that are usually condescending, preachy, or inauthentic, and in doing so, he finds the humor, and something honest too.

Ben ends up in small-town Texas thanks to one of his numerous hookups. The family of aspiring musician Abilene (Lio Tipton), who has met a tragic end in what appears to be an accidental overdose death, is convinced that Ben was her serious boyfriend, and implores him to come to her funeral. When Abilene’s brother, Ty ( Boyd Holbrook ), insists that his sister was murdered and enlists Ben in his quest for revenge, his journalist ears perk up — this would be a great podcast. He quickly pitches it to a producer back in New York, Eloise ( Issa Rae ), and equipped with some Amazon flannel and the Voice Memos app, he sets out to tell the tale of a dead white girl, and of course, America itself.

The way in which Ben finds himself embroiled in the mystery swirling around a stranger’s death is reminiscent of the Serial podcast “S-Town,” and it’s clear that Novak knows this genre of “prestige journalism” well: when Ben speaks, even as we know we’re supposed to chuckle at his purple descriptions of the Texas sunset, he nails the style and cadence, the slick language of a media-savvy writer. It’s funny, but it’s also insightful. Ben’s work passes muster, which lends Novak’s film merit, and adds another layer to the complexity of this film.

A woman with a phone in front of a whiteboard in the movie "Vengeance."

“Vengeance” is fast and loose, moving quickly, the punchlines barely landing before we’re on to the next joke. The fantastic ensemble cast, including J. Smith Cameron and Ashton Kutcher make meals out of their dialogue, and though some of the plot’s twists and turns are a bit facile, and too heightened, it serves the mystery that churns the story along.

In “Vengeance” Novak’s linguistic blade is simultaneously incisive and skewering. He indicts Ben’s pretension and the craven way he seeks to extract Abilene’s story for his own gain, inspecting the media’s role in the “culture wars,” and the socially constructed divisions in our country. But the film manages to land somewhere between sour and sincere, as Ben makes meaningful connections with both Abi’s family, and Abi’s story, finding the heart after all. As Ben does, so does Novak, unearthing some profound truths, wrapped in comedy, about America right now, too.

'Vengeance'

Rated: R, for language and brief violence Running time: 1 hour, 34 minutes Playing: Starts July 29 in general release

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B.J. Novak Unpacks That Shocking ‘Vengeance’ Ending: ‘Is America Going to Heal?’

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[Editor’s note: The following story contains spoilers for “ Vengeance .”]

B.J. Novak is waiting for the message of “Vengeance” to be made obsolete. While the filmmaker’s feature directorial debut, a Shakespearian story of revenge, is rife with Quentin Tarantino references, Woody Allen-esque banter , and a nod to Jordan Peele’s masterful transcendence of genre , writer-director Novak wondered if its message of a divided America would eventually be irrelevant.

Sadly, the opposite seems to be true.

“Vengeance” stars as Novak as Ben Manalowitz, a New Yorker journalist looking to launch a podcast with a multi-hyphenate producer, played by Issa Rae . Ben begins investigating the death of past hook-up Abilene (Lio Tipton) after receiving a strange phone call from Abilene’s brother (Boyd Holbrook). Ben travels to West Texas, where Abilene’s relatives are convinced Ben was her full-on boyfriend in New York City and Ben begins to wonder if Abilene really overdosed or if she was murdered. J. Smith-Cameron, Dove Cameron, Isabella Amara, Elli Bickle, Ashton Kutcher, and John Mayer star in the ensemble thriller that hinges on the perceived stereotypes with conspiracy theories and coastal elitism.

“As I wrote the script and prepped the movie, I thought, ‘Is the moment of this going to pass? Is America going to heal?,'” Novak told IndieWire during a recent interview. “How wrong I was, that it only became more topical as we filmed it in terms of the division and chaos of the country, spiritually.”

It also only became exacerbated by the 2020 election that occurred right in the middle of filming, with the “Vengeance” production spanning New Mexico and Texas.

“Obviously we’re a Hollywood production, so there’s a lot of blue state actors and a red state crew filming in New Mexico and small places in Texas,” Novak explained. “I remember reminding people the day before the election, I spoke to the departments and I said, ‘I just want to remind everyone that with the election tomorrow, we are in oil country and not everyone will share your political views. It is absolutely fine to do what you may with that. It’s fine to express your opinions if that’s your choice. Just be mindful, whatever that means to you, that you are not in a bubble.'”

Yet Novak confirmed the cathartic ending of “Vengeance” — one that shows Ben (Novak) taking matters into his own hands while lazily corrupt law enforcement overlooks the glaring global situation of illegal drug trades, the exploitative nature of seeking stardom, and a family’s refusal to admit the truth — was the only “inevitable” conclusion for the timely Blumhouse-produced feature, now in theaters.

“I was actually more concerned with hiding it because to me, it felt like the only place for this movie to end,” Novak said. “So the fact that audiences are a little shaken by it, don’t quite know what to make of it at first, is very exciting for me. It means I did pull off what I wanted it to.”

The finale sequence could be viewed as a dream scenario, tying together Novak’s inspiration from working with Quentin Tarantino in “Inglorious Basterds.”

“It is a complex country we live in right now. It’s a complex world. And morality is complex and getting lost,” Novak said. “The way to take my character from point A to point B, point B is a very shocking place, surprising place. I like when movies or TV shows go a little further than you thought they could. It leaves you with something to think about after the movie is over.”

That head-scratching double take is exactly what Novak tried to emulate from fellow “brilliant” writer-director Peele, whose latest blockbuster “Nope” premiered one week prior to “Vengeance.”

“I think the reason Jordan Peele is the best is because, I’m biased, he comes from comedy. And he’s the best at comedy!,” Novak said. “I think comedy is the secret weapon of all non-comedies. [Martin] Scorsese, nobody even notices how funny he is because he’s so good at everything else. Meryl Streep is funny even though she’s the greatest dramatic actress. Jordan Peele, his movies are filled with comedy but you barely notice it because he integrates it so brilliantly into everything else. So to me, the inspiration of Jordan Peele is, I see a comedy person making it in the dramatic world.”

Will there be a Peele-Novak collaboration on the horizon?

“I can only dream,” Novak said. Much like, it seems, his cliffhanger ending for “Vengeance.” But one thing is for sure: There’s more Novak to come. “I’m working on the next script right now and it’s even more ambitious than this one,” the director said. “I just hope someone wants to make it with me.”

A Focus Features release, “Vengeance” is now in theaters. 

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‘Vengeance’ Will Make You Want to Punch B.J. Novak in the Face — in a Good Way

By K. Austin Collins

K. Austin Collins

It’s a wonder more fish-out-of-water comedies aren’t about journalists. Being an outsider is, in many versions of the job, central to the task. Disaster strikes, you helicopter in, vacuum up the details, organize them, spit them out with a handsome lede, helicopter out. Or, in the case of Vengeance ’s Ben Manalowitz, you hook up with a girl a few times and later get a call out of nowhere that she died — a call that you , a mere hookup, are getting thanks to kissy-faced photos she posted on social media, which have confused her family into thinking you were her boyfriend. Then you helicopter in. 

In that second case, you’re the story — you and this weird little journey you’re on, which goes downhill from the moment that you’re asked to give a eulogy for a woman whose name you didn’t even remember when you heard she had died. One of hookup culture’s worst nightmares is sudden, unexpected obligation. For Ben, a consummate opportunist with dreams of nabbing a big-time podcast, obligation lands in his lap at just the right time, and he wouldn’t be the man that he is if he didn’t instinctively turn it into an opportunity. 

A good thing about Vengeance is that Ben is played by B. J. Novak, who also wrote and directed the movie, and who’s succeeded at coming up with a project that matches his comedic style: likably unlikable, the kind of prick you’d still watch a movie about. Vengeance exercises his knack for making unappetizing social qualities watchable, maybe because he’s playing a character whose self-confidence you don’t really believe in, or maybe because you already know that the movie will make him the butt of some of its rudest jokes. At the movie’s start, Ben is in full-on womanizer mode, palling around with John Mayer and saying things about women that you somehow doubt he can really live up to — well on his way, in other words, to earning himself the punch in the face that he’ll get later in the movie. He writes for the New Yorker , apparently, but that matters less than the fact that he can’t help but correct people when they mistakenly call it New York Magazine — a distinction that for Ben merits all the difference in the world. 

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Ben is dragged down to Nowheresville, Texas, to the funeral of Abby (Lio Tipton), only because he doesn’t have enough of a backbone to tell her family that this woman was just a hookup — an awkward thing to have to say about someone’s dead relative, admittedly. From watching Vengeance , you’d guess much of Ben’s life played out like this: beholden to stronger personalities, empowered by his byline and his “outside-of-Boston” degree. It’s only when he meets Abby’s mother (played by J. Smith-Cameron), older brother (Boyd Holbrook), sisters, younger brother, and grandmother — with their wild, Texan talk, and Alamo hero-worship, and guns, and bloodthirsty fantasies of vengeance — that he sees this trip for the gift that it is. Abby ostensibly died of a drug overdose. Her family believes she was murdered. Ben… doesn’t care so much about that. He cares about the wild things coming out of their mouths. He is going to exploit them. 

Vengeance pokes fun at New York writer-types and insular, gun-toting Texans both. It’s funnier and smarter when it’s sticking it to New York media. “Not every white guy in New York needs a podcast,” Ben is told by Eloise (Issa Rae), a successful producer. Of course he starts one anyway. Of course it’s “about America.” And of course his needling opportunism meets its match when he actually makes his way around Texas and learns, the hard way, that he doesn’t know spit about the place: doesn’t know the right teams to root for, doesn’t know the social rules (such as: only the residents of a place can shit on that place) or which jokes to laugh at or why it’s so tedious for someone to have to explain just why it is that they love Whataburger. Watching Ben learn that you cannot judge books by their covers, not even the books trying to make nice with the local branch of a cartel, is a little boring. It’s appropriate to a movie that’s gently spoofing podcasters, however. It’s when we see Ben get humiliated that Vengeance serves up its finest thrills: red-hot, uncomfortable, a little mean, vaguely dangerous. It isn’t until he’s at a rodeo that Ben fully announces his Jewishness within the movie, by way of saying his last name aloud, in front of a crowd. It’s a scene that started by confronting him with a Confederate flag, one of the movie’s better punchlines. And now look at him: singled out in front of a crowd whose hostility could be because he’s an outsider, or because he keeps putting his foot in his mouth, or because he’s condescending, or because he’s a “New York writer,” or because he’s Jewish — or all of the above. 

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The tension works, the comedy works, because it’s unilateral. The rowdy Texans are the butt of one joke, Ben the butt of the funnier joke — the one about a try-hard smarty who works in liberal media, makes a living telling relatable human interest stories about people from all walks of life, and yet bears little trace of having ever actually interacted with a fellow human in a real, nontransactional way. It’s a joke that’s been told about the overeducated before. It sort of works here, though, because Ben’s participation in this premise is so narcissistically far-fetched to begin with.

Clearly, he cannot be allowed to stay this way. That would be too vicious. And Ben isn’t cool enough to pull off that narcissism with the smooth, polished charisma of a plainspoken, genius record producer, like the man he encounters in Quinten Sellers (a scene-stealing Ashton Kutcher). Vacuum-sealed life lessons are so de rigueur for NPR-style podcasts and their murder-mystery peers that a movie like Vengeance would be wise enough to parody the idea, no holds barred and no apologies needed. Vengeance is not quite so wise. It’s almost there. We’ve reached the era in which, for a murder podcast, no ending is the best ending. Sure, the mystery remains unsolved, but now we can expound . Vengeance pokes its fun at this idea. The result is less an elbow to the ribs than proof that the movie is laudably current, very up-to-the-moment, very wink-wink . 

Or maybe Vengeance knows that, as a comedy, it doesn’t have much of a leg to stand on if corny trends in podcasting are the target. Podcasts often reward fake-deep explorations of the self. So, unfortunately, do many current comedies, which in this century have often fallen prey to a similar mandate that we eat our broccoli, taking our laughs with a side of social responsibility, their meanness tempered by gestures at what can be learned, their plots overwhelmingly invested in goodness, niceness, and faith in others. At its best moments, Vengeance sees the peril in all of this by seeing right through it — by seeing through Ben, whose journey to our good graces is made more drastic by his starting the movie out as a complete dick. 

In the end, we see Ben falling asleep listening to Abby’s music — a stark change from the man who earlier couldn’t make the time to so much as click a link. In a morally effective comedy, an outright satire, this shift would be world-shaking; it’d be so ironic, you’d have to laugh. Moral comedy, this is not. More than anything else, it’s just convenient. 

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Vengeance review: a mystery with more on its mind than just murder

When we meet podcaster/reporter Ben Manalowitz, the lead character in B.J. Novak’s directorial debut Vengeance , he’s engaging in the kind of behavior that seems typical of a single New York male asshole. At a bougie publishing party in Brooklyn, he’s busy rating and ranking random women in his DMs with his equally cringy friend John, played all too well by the singer John Mayer. Unlikable protagonists are all the rage these days, and after just five minutes, Ben not only qualifies as one but also threatens to become too sleazy and insufferable for the movie’s own good.

Dead White Girl

Not just another mystery.

Yet the beauty of Vengeance , which Novak also stars in (as Ben) and wrote, is that nothing is what it seems, and for a murder mystery that doubles as a culture clash comedy, that’s an extremely good thing. Alternatively funny and moving, the movie is always intelligent and sensitive to the characters it could have just mocked. It’s the rare mystery that prioritizes the life of the victim, and rarer still, it’s one of the few summer films with something to say.

The mystery begins when Ben is called by the brother of one of his past hookups, Abilene Shaw, informing him that she’s been found dead of a drug overdose in an empty field. Sensing a story opportunity (the podcast is eventually called Dead White Girl , which is both on-the-nose and bluntly accurate to the exfoliative nature of true crime media), Ben agrees to attend her funeral in Texas, unsure as to why he’s been so fondly remembered by someone he himself can barely recall. Once there, he meets Abilene’s family: brother Ty ( Boyd Holbrook, excellent), a handsome urban cowboy; mother Sharon (J-Smith Cameron); sisters Paris (Isabella Amara) and Kansas City (Dove Cameron), both eager to be famous; grandma Carole (Louanne Stephens), who likes to solve problems with a shotgun; and little brother El Stupido (Eli Abrams Bickel), who does not live up to his nickname.

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On paper and when you first meet them, these people are Texas caricatures who are instantly looked down upon by Ben, who can’t relate to them at all. But as Ben’s editor Eloise ( Insecure ‘s Issa Rae , sharp as ever) insists on him staying in Abilene’s desolate town to get to the bottom of her murder, he begins to connect them and the other citizens as less like subjects of a podcast and more like people genuinely rocked by their shared tragedy.

It’s to Novak’s credit that he takes the time to give every character, even possible suspects like possible Mexican cartel member Sancholo (Zach Villa), nuance and life. For instance, Kansas City may want to become famous and leave her town for good, but she’ll take umbrage if Ben, or anyone else, insults it in front of her. Ty may be a good old cowboy who loves drinking beer, but he also is deeply committed to his family, and it’s this desire that fuels his need for vengeance and, eventually, Ben’s need to find her killer.

Most prominently is Abilene’s music producer Quinten Sellers (Ashton Kutcher, surprisingly good), himself an outsider who is first introduced rhapsodizing over another young girl’s singing voice. We’ve seen this character before, the sleazy mogul taking advantage of his naïve students, yet both Novak and Kutcher don’t push Quentin’s menace. You’re not entirely sure what his deal is or whether or not you can trust him, and that’s entirely the point.

Ben’s quest for answers in solving Abilene’s death leads him to experience the small town life that many Texas natives can relate to and outsiders can chuckle at. In one scene, Ben attends a rodeo and incorrectly names the wrong university as his preferred school of choice in Texas. Only a city slicker would cite UT-Austin over Texas Tech, and Ben’s embarrassment is played for well-earned laughs. It’s good to see the arrogant New Yorker get taken down a peg.

In another scene, Ben accompanies the Shaw family to their gourmet eatery of choice: Whataburger. When he asks what makes the Texas-based chain so special from other fast food restaurants, each Shaw blankly asserts that “it’s there.” What more explanation does he need? It’s Whataburger ! These scenes are comedic, and there’s a subtle clash of cultural humor that isn’t overdone or played too broadly.

Yet the heart of the movie is the mystery of Abilene’s death, and it’s here that Novak reveals his intentions to not only provide a good whodunit but also to critique the true crime genre itself. There’s a third act monologue by a character that explicitly states who Novak is condemning: us, or more specifically, the culture which encourages hot takes without context and division without empathy. Vengeance argues that the revelation of Abilene’s murderer, and the story of how she died, shouldn’t be consumed by us or anyone else beyond her family. We’re using her death as entertainment, something to pass the time and sell to advertisers.

In its final moments, Novak doesn’t let us off the hook or provide easy answers. We got what we wanted, but did we have any right to in the first place? Vengeance is many things: a compelling murder mystery , a funny City Slickers update, and a critique on true crime and podcast culture. That it succeeds at all three, while also leaving us entertained and challenged, is a small miracle in a summer full of easy delights and superficial pleasures.

Vengeance is out now in movie theaters nationwide.

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Review: B.J. Novak’s ‘Vengeance’ is original and weird — in the best way

vengeance movie review new yorker

“Vengeance” is unexpected and, in the best way, weird. In his first film as a writer-director, B.J. Novak takes familiar elements, but puts them together in ways that are original and unexpected. Even when the plot turns go off the deep end, it’s impossible not to appreciate Novak’s audacity.

Often first-time filmmakers just want to make a plausible movie, something that looks and functions as a normal, acceptable motion picture. But Novak isn’t settling for that. Rather, “Vengeance” is an attempt to make a “B.J. Novak movie” before such a thing exists. He takes chances, succeeds most of the time, blows himself up once or twice and never threatens to bore his audience.

Novak himself plays Ben, a reasonably successful writer for the New Yorker whose personal life doesn’t amount to much besides hookups that he meets on dating apps. His focus is on his career, and his great ambition, which seems fairly modest, is to become a successful podcaster, working with Eloise (Issa Rae), a star podcast producer.

One day, Ben finds out that a woman with whom he had a casual affair has died of a drug overdose , and he allows himself to be talked into attending the funeral in West Texas, even though that means flying in all the way from New York. In Texas, he meets the young woman’s family, who are all convinced that he was the love of her life. There, experiencing culture shock and amazed by the colorful characters he meets, he decides to stay on and make a podcast.

Like Ben’s podcast concept, “Vengeance” changes shape and direction, mixing familiar elements in unfamiliar combinations. At first, it’s all about Texas as seen from a New Yorker’s point of view. Then it’s a murder investigation; then the story of deluded people who think their family member was murdered; then an examination of a divided America as seen from an oblique angle; and on and on.

Every time you think you’ve put your finger on “Vengeance,” it slips out like mercury, sometimes going forward, sometimes back into some previously abandoned direction. At times, it seems as if it might be the story of a guy who falls in love with a dead woman, or that of a guy who realizes he has to slow down if he ever wants to love somebody. But that aspect never quite takes over.

What distinguishes Novak’s film is that, in the aggregate, all these various feints and hints of plot directions don’t make “Vengeance” seem like a bunch of unrealized impulses. Instead, they all get thrown into the pot and become part of the movie’s texture and meaning.

vengeance movie review new yorker

Novak’s direction is full of detail, but he’s subtle about it. He hammers home nothing, just lets us see things — such as a stray look that crosses the face of a character who isn’t speaking. Watch J. Smith-Cameron, who plays the dead woman’s mother. Long before we explicitly know what Mom is thinking, Novak and Smith-Cameron are setting us up for things that will be said 30 to 60 minutes later.

Every character gets their due, and every actor is given something to do. Ashton Kutcher is in just a couple of scenes, but he’s memorable as an unusually insightful and philosophical record producer. And Issa Rae gets to show a new ease and confidence before the camera.

In the last half hour, “Vengeance” gets bizarre. It can’t be said that it falls apart, because the one thing it doesn’t lose is its audience’s interest. But it does go crazy, with a succession of big, unbelievable plot turns. Still, at his worst, I like Novak’s nerve.

M “Vengeance”: Comedy-Drama. Starring B.J. Novak, Issa Rae, Ashton Kutcher and J. Smith-Cameron. Directed by B.J. Novak. (R. 94 minutes.) In theaters Friday, July 29.

  • Mick LaSalle Follow: Mick LaSalle Mick LaSalle is The San Francisco Chronicle's film critic. Email: [email protected] Twitter: @MickLaSalle

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Election 2024 updates: trump, biden to meet at white house wednesday, review: 'vengeance' marks a dynamite feature directorial debut for b.j. novak.

The movie exposes an America broken by disconnection.

A New Yorker writer hits a wall of culture shock at the Texas funeral of an ex hook-up who may have been -- wait for it -- murdered.

If you want to know more, head out to theaters where "Vengeance," spiced with mirth and menace, is anything but predictable.

Before it ends in a bummer of rambling incoherence, "Vengeance" represents a dynamite debut in features for director-writer B.J. Novak, best known as part of the creative team behind "The Office," the sitcom in which he memorably co-starred as sales rep Ryan Howard.

You may also know Novak from his work in Quentin Tarantino's "Inglourious Basterds," where he fought the Nazis. Or maybe you respond to his stand-up or his children's books. I cite these credits to indicate that Novak is impossible to classify.

So is "Vengeance," which is all to the good since it's rare to find a new movie that sneaks up on you with such stealth originality.

MORE: Review: 'The Gray Man' is only good enough to rank as watchable

Novak plays Ben Manalowitz, a Brooklyn careerist and toxic male who talks about the disposability of women with his pal John Mayer (yup, the real one).

Editor’s Picks

vengeance movie review new yorker

Review: You don’t see many sweet little surprises like 'Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris'

vengeance movie review new yorker

Review: 'The Gray Man' is only good enough to rank as watchable

vengeance movie review new yorker

Review: 'Nope' is a spellbinder that keeps pushing boundaries

Though Ben enjoys his job as a Manhattan journalist, he aspires to that 21st-century Holy Grail -- podcasting. His producer, Eloise (a captivating Issa Rae), tells him -- "not every white guy needs a podcast" with just the right notes of "I-dare-you" cunning.

vengeance movie review new yorker

But first, Ben must heed the call of West Texas, where casual lover Abilene Shaw (Lio Tipton, seen in flashbacks) -- they hooked up on a dating app -- has overdosed on opioids in an oil field.

Though Ben can barely remember Abby, her family has the idea that Ben was her one and only. And, hey, there might be a podcast in his elitist tangle with these Lone Star gun nuts.

Luckily, the condescending jokes are mostly on Ben as he pokes his digital phone recorder into Abby's world. Her kid brother (Eli Abrams Bickel) truly mourns her loss. And when her older brother Ty (a terrific Boyd Holbrook) theorizes that someone put a hit on sis ("she never touched so much as an Advil"), he's out for Texas vengeance. Ben just wants a buzzier podcast.

vengeance movie review new yorker

Novak can't bring many dimensions to the jerk he is playing, but his keen eye for detail extends to the evocative original score by Finneas O'Connell and the way he shows no fear of stillness in letting the camera study characters in the frame.

MORE: Review: 'Nope' is a spellbinder that keeps pushing boundaries

Novak's script inspires his actors to raise their game.

Ashton Kutcher, who gave Novak early work on his "Punk'd" series," is all kinds of terrific as Quentin Sellers, a local music producer -- or is he? -- who can articulate and exploit the dangerous implications of America's divide.

vengeance movie review new yorker

And J. Smith Cameron, the darling of "Succession" (listen up, Emmy), is sublime as Abby's mother, a firebrand you don't dare define by her red-state roots.

Novak knows it would be a reductive folly to shrink his movie into a war between the cliches of redneck politics and Ben's liberal narcissism. Not when there's a shared humanity to lay bare.

At its best, the seriously funny and fierce "Vengeance" exposes an America broken by disconnection. Novak digs deep beneath the glib surface of his mystery thriller to find a responsive empathy aching to get out. He's a filmmaker to watch. Get busy.

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‘Vengeance’ is a startlingly good first film from B.J. Novak

The multi-hyphenate produced, wrote, directed and stars in this sharp black comedy

vengeance movie review new yorker

The movie “Vengeance” — a black comedy about cultural arrogance, the opioid crisis, guns, storytelling and the need to, well, get even — marks the feature debut of writer-director-producer B.J. Novak (best known as a writer, director, producer and ensemble cast member of “The Office”). To call Novak’s first feature auspicious would not be wrong, but it’s more than that. “Vengeance” is an arrestingly smart, funny and affecting take on a slice of the American zeitgeist, one in which both the divisions between and connections with our fellow citizens are brought into sharp relief. It’s a terrific yarn, both provocative and entertaining, which might only surprise those who aren’t familiar with Novak’s best-selling children’s book, “The Book With No Pictures.”

Novak also stars here, as journalist Ben Manalowitz, a sometime New Yorker magazine writer and podcaster for the “This American Life”-esque “American Moment,” with a Manhattan-centric view of flyover country to rival the geographic myopia satirized by illustrator Saul Steinberg in his famous 1976 cover for that magazine, “ View of the World From 9th Avenue .” When Ben gets a call from the brother of Abby Shaw — an aspiring singer Ben “hooked up” with a few times, in his words — telling him that she has died of an overdose of OxyContin and insisting — inexplicably to Ben — that Abby (short for Abilene) would have wanted her “boyfriend” to attend the funeral, he is given no choice but to agree. Once Ben reluctantly flies out to West Texas and the brother, Ty (Boyd Holbrook), informs Ben that he believes Abby’s death was murder and that the two of them should collaborate to avenge it, violently, Ben hits upon an idea, but only after pitching it to his podcast editor back home (Issa Rae).

Ben will do some interviews and put together a story: perhaps not the kind of investigative exposé Ty expects, but one that looks at Texas, and Abby (Lio Tipton, seen in cellphone video clips and recorded music performances), as symptoms of a deeper malaise. Ty calls that an acceptable compromise. “Once the people on Reddit find out” who the murderer is, he says, “they’ll kill him for us.” But all that Ben has really promised, in his cagey way, is this: to find the person — or, as he carefully puts it, “the generalized societal force” — responsible for Abby’s death, and to “define” it.

It’s a slippery vow, and it suggests, for obvious reasons, that what follows is going to involve an unfairly patronizing caricature of rural American life and the Shaws, including Granny Carole (Louanne Stephens), mom Sharon (J. Smith-Cameron), sisters Paris and Kansas City (Isabella Amara and Dove Cameron), and little brother Mason, a.k.a. El Stupido (Eli Abrams Bickel).

But Novak is too smart for that, and if anyone comes across badly here, it’s Ben, whom Novak is big enough and self-effacing enough to gently ridicule. The supporting cast gets off relatively easy, and includes a remarkable performance by Ashton Kutcher as Abby’s slick and silver-tongued record producer, Quentin Sellers. Quentin is a kind of cowboy poet/philosopher in a 10-gallon hat and embroidered white suit that looks like something made by the late tailor-to-the-country-western-stars Nudie Cohn . Under Novak’s low-key direction, Kutcher never pushes the performance too far. Like the narrative itself, which zigs when you expect it to zag, Quentin is full of surprises.

Superficially, “Vengeance” is a murder mystery, with its share of red herrings, a password-protected cellphone belonging to the victim and a Suspect No. 1: drug dealer Sancholo (Zach Villa), who also turns out to be something other than expected.

If “Vengeance” has a weakness, it’s that it sometimes comes across as a little too written, for lack of a better word. Too often, characters talk in a way that sounds less like themselves than like a guy at the keyboard of a laptop: a little bit Ben Manalowitz and a little bit B.J. Novak.

It’s a small quibble. This is a movie worth seeing, and listening to its unpredictable insights. There’s a running joke in the film: Ben signals his assent, over and over, with the hyperbolic catchphrase “a hundred percent.” Is “Vengeance” a flawless movie? No, but it’s 90 percent perfect.

R. At area theaters. Contains coarse language, drug use and brief violence. 107 minutes.

vengeance movie review new yorker

vengeance movie review new yorker

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Film review: ‘vengeance’ gets texas right, 100 percent.

Home » Film Review: ‘Vengeance’ Gets Texas Right, 100 Percent

vengeance movie review new yorker

Actor Issa Rae (left) and filmmaker/actor B.J. Novak (right) on the set of “Vengeance,” a Focus Features release (Photo Credit: Patti Perret/Focus Features).

vengeance movie review new yorker

(“Vengeance” trailer courtesy of Focus Features)

“Vengeance” must rank at the top of all films ever based in Texas.

It is that good.

If it does not rank at the top of that proverbial limestone hill in the Texas Hill Country better known as Texas’ Movie Mt. Rushmore, it must rank in the top five, period, point blank.

Like many places in the South, Texas has always gotten caricatured and stereotyped by Hollywood productions.

But despite a lot of previous Hollywood misses, “Vengeance” gets it just right.

The movie does not ignore Texas’ stereotypical eccentricities and sometimes backwards politics.

But it does not slip into the bad accents and total unrealistic vibes of some of its predecessors.

Although the 1994 Houston-based film “Jason’s Lyric” is one of the best films ever based in Texas, the accents (namely by actor Allen Payne) still bother true Houstonians to this day because many Houstonians do not know anyone from that H-Town that talks like Payne’s character, Jason.

Fortunately, “Vengeance” does not make a mockery of the Lone Star State, instead portraying some of the best qualities of Texans, while not forgiving them for their faults.

In “Vengeance,” Ben Manalowitz (B.J. Novak) is living the young American dream in New York City.

Ben has a great job as a journalist for the New Yorker magazine.

He has even ventured into podcasting, a necessity for any serious journalist in the 21 st century.

Most importantly, Ben is truly enjoying the single life, 100 percent.

In “Vengeance,” Ben loves to say “100 percent” when he is in total agreement with someone or something.

When a man is single with some money in his pockets and not a total eyesore, he will succeed with the ladies, especially in a city as big as New York.

As a result, Ben takes advantage of hook up culture, hooking up a lot with random women that he has no emotional connection with.

In “Vengeance,” Ben often does not even remember the women that he has hooked up with.

He saves their phone number under names or traits that will help him remember them should they call.

However, Ben assumes that many of the women he hooks up with are also in it just for the hook up, and not to settle down and eventually get hitched.

As a result, when Ben receives a phone call from a private number informing him that his girlfriend has died in Texas, he has no idea what the heck is going on.

Ben must desperately check his social media to even vaguely remember the dead girl.

As a matter of fact, Ben has another woman in his bed when he gets the news about his dead “girlfriend” Abilene (Abby for short).

Although Ben tries to weasel out of the phone call, when Ty (Boyd Holbrook) tells him that he must attend the funeral and that the family will foot the bill, Ben reluctantly takes the trip to middle of nowhere Texas to lay the “love of his life” to rest.

When Ben asks Ty if the funeral is in Dallas, Ty responds that Dallas is not Texas.

When Ben asks Ty if the funeral is in Houston, Ty responds that Houston is another country.

When Ty asks if Ben has ever heard of Abilene, Texas, Ty responds that they are nice little distance from Abilene, Texas.

However, the rural area that Abilene came from before pursuing a musical career in New York is the real and true Texas, according to those who inhabit the rural and conservative parts of the Lone Star State.

In “Vengeance,” Ben’s intentions are to lay Abilene to rest in rural Texas and quickly return the “Big Apple.”

But when Ty informs him that he does not believe that Abilene died because of her own actions, Ben finds a reason to stay for a little while longer.

Ty believes that Abilene was murdered, and Ben sees this as a storyline that will take his podcasting career to the next level.

Let’s just say that Ben gets more than he bargains for as he gets to know the family and the townspeople of rural Texas.

In “Vengeance,” filmmaker/actor Novak injects the right amount of comedy, quirkiness, drama, heart, intrigue and plot twists to cover the bases necessary to rank the film high on the list of Texas films.

When Ty tells Ben that he calls his much younger brother El Stupido (Eli Bickel), Ty tells Ben it will not hurt his feelings because his brother does not speak Spanish.

Ben soon finds out why Texans are so enamored with the fast-food chain, Whataburger.

No matter where a person goes in Texas, Whataburger is always right there.

Audiences will fall in love with Abilene’s crazy family in “Vengeance.”

However, they will not be the only characters to intrigue audiences.

Novak finds a way to utilize the greatness of Issa Rae even though a Texas film might not be something her fans would expect from her.

However, her role as Eloise allows her to stay true to herself even though she seems like the outcast when it comes to the cast.

Think of Rae’s performance in “The Photograph” because in that film set deep in the South, Rae still comes off as the big city slicker amongst the rural folks.

But the most intriguing character of the bunch is record producer Quentin Sellers, portrayed by Ashton Kutcher.

In “Vengeance,” Quentin is still a true rural Texan.

But he has more sophistication and elegance than his more country counterparts in the town.

In “Vengeance,” Kutcher’s performance is the epitome of why the film should rank so high in the canon of Texas films.

Yes, Texas is country.

Yes, Texas is unique.

But, like most of the South, it is way more sophisticated and slicker than it is given credit for.

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Vengeance Reviews

  • 65   Metascore
  • 1 hr 47 mins
  • Drama, Comedy, Suspense
  • Watchlist Where to Watch

A city-slicking radio talk show host from New York learns about the unsettling tale of a murdered young woman, a girl he once had a one-night stand with. Determined to learn the truth, he ventures to the American southwest in pursuit of clues that could yield the identity of her killer.

Reviewed By: Rovi

If an audience missed The Premise, created and directed by B.J. Novak in 2021, they might be surprised at the genius of Vengeance. He proves his triple threat skills as a writer, director, and actor with this, his debut feature. In his carefully crafted hands, this detective story cajoles audiences into laughter while simultaneously shining a light on them and their distinctly human flaws. Novak plays Ben Manalowitz, a cocky New Yorker addicted to social media and the women on it. When his phone pings in the movie's opening and a mysterious voice informs him of his girlfriend's passing, he truly doesn't know which girlfriend. He's that guy, and B.J. manages to play the role with charm and deprecation, so the audience doesn't entirely hate him. The voice tells him that he has to go to her funeral, and he finds himself in Texas, delivering the eulogy. The movie is a detective story, and Ben becomes slightly obsessed with the dead girl's family, played by a stellar ensemble of heavy-hitting character actors J. Smith Cameron (Succession), Dove Cameron (Hairspray), Isabella Amara (Euphoria), and Boyd Holbrook (Narcos). Ben makes it his mission to find out who the killer is. He dives deeply into her socials with the help of an influencer friend (the dynamic Issa Rae of Insecure), who runs a podcast. Meanwhile, the voice of the girl's brother eggs Ben on, trying to get him to enact vengeance on the killer or killers that Ben is trying to track down. One of the film's finest moments is when Ben meets up with a glossy music producer played by Ashton Kutcher, who arguably gives the best performance of his career. An audience can only hope that this is the first film in a long directorial career for B.J. Novak, who seems to have a lot to say. It is a funny, sharp detective story and a murder mystery with plenty of twists and turns. But right when the audience thinks they know everything, they are dead wrong. Even more than a great comedy, which it is, it is a commentary on current times and society at large. That is where its genius lies and what B.J. Novak is so good at; he can shine a light on the faults of humanity while making his leading man (in this case, himself) shoulder the blame. The movie clocks in at a lightning one hour and thirty-four minutes and is worth every moment in that dark theater.

vengeance movie review new yorker

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Common Sense Media Review

Tara McNamara

Thoughtful comedy questions stereotypes; violence, language.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Vengeance is a comedy thriller about a New York journalist who thinks he's found the perfect true-crime story in a small Texas town. Written and directed by and starring B.J. Novak ( The Office ), the movie is about reevaluating preconceived notions that are based on where…

Why Age 14+?

Strong language includes "a--hole," "balls," "dumbass," "s--t," and several uses

Opioid use within a party atmosphere, leading to negative consequences. Social d

Guns. Shooting with blood. Explosion with minor wounds. Hard punch. Drug overdos

Apple products. A brand of tequila is shown prominently. Some brands are used as

Men talk about/justify their "pick 'em up and throw 'em away" treatment of women

Any Positive Content?

Ben is an intellectual, opportunistic New York journalist who arrives in Texas w

In a socially disconnected and antagonistic world, we need to choose to connect

A Black woman is depicted positively, as a successful leader who chooses her emp

Parents need to know that Vengeance is a comedy thriller about a New York journalist who thinks he's found the perfect true-crime story in a small Texas town. Written and directed by and starring B.J. Novak ( The Office ), the movie is about reevaluating preconceived notions that are based on where someone lives or what they do for a living. Most characters initially seem to play into broad stereotypes -- Mexican cartel members, Texas hicks, etc. -- but the story argues that if we look closer, we can see people for their full selves, rather than labels. As a result, the film gives both urban and rural folks the ability to laugh together, at themselves. The central plot is about a young woman who fatally overdosed on opioids, and there's a lot of talk about drug use and partying. Drugs aren't portrayed positively, but drinking is shown as contributing to a social bond. Guns are presented as part of Texas culture, including one owned by a 9-year-old. There's a shooting that's pretty bloody. Language and insults include "dumbass," "s--t," and variations of "f--k."

To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Strong language includes "a--hole," "balls," "dumbass," "s--t," and several uses of "f--k," including "motherf----r" and "f--ktards." A 9-year-old is called "El Stupido" by his family as if it's his name.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Opioid use within a party atmosphere, leading to negative consequences. Social drinking at bars and parties. At start of film, a sympathetic character dies of an overdose. Several moments of discussion about whether she did or didn't have a drug habit.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Violence & Scariness

Guns. Shooting with blood. Explosion with minor wounds. Hard punch. Drug overdose.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Apple products. A brand of tequila is shown prominently. Some brands are used as punchlines or to define characters, such as Whataburger, Fritos, Solo cups, and Prius.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Men talk about/justify their "pick 'em up and throw 'em away" treatment of women. References to casual sex. Sex implied by showing a couple in bed together after the fact.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Positive Role Models

Ben is an intellectual, opportunistic New York journalist who arrives in Texas with a superior point of view but comes to appreciate the qualities of the people he meets there -- and to realize that being different doesn't make you less than. He does a lot of soul-searching about who he is as a person. Movie offers an example of the beauty of a close family, although they have their flaws.

Positive Messages

In a socially disconnected and antagonistic world, we need to choose to connect rather than judge. Explores why people are prone to believe conspiracy theories. But there's a negative approach to solving a problem.

Diverse Representations

A Black woman is depicted positively, as a successful leader who chooses her employee's well-being over the project she has invested in. Portrayal of West Texas characters initially plays into stereotypes, but as Ben gets to know them, it becomes clear to him and to viewers that they're much more than "hicks." Mexican characters are portrayed as being in a cartel; cartel head is depicted as sensitive, caring.

Did we miss something on diversity? Suggest an update .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

vengeance movie review new yorker

Parent and Kid Reviews

  • Parents say (3)
  • Kids say (4)

Based on 3 parent reviews

Underage girl portrayed sexually

Dark funny humor with some 'philosophy', what's the story.

When Ben (B.J. Novak), a writer for The New Yorker , receives a call stating that his "girlfriend" Abilene Shaw ( Lio Tipton ) is dead from a drug overdose, he has to scroll through his phone to figure out who this girl was. Baffled but curious, Ben flies to Texas to attend Abby's funeral. When her brother ( Boyd Holbrook ) asks Ben to join him in a quest for VENGEANCE, Ben realizes that Abby's close-knit family and her not-so-mysterious death have the makings of a perfect podcast.

Is It Any Good?

Novak clearly poured his heart and soul into this story, which works hard to try to show Americans that, to understand each other, we need more compassion and connection and fewer snap judgments. Using comedy, mystery, and self-deprecating humor, Novak's Ben sets out confidently to show why people are prone to believe conspiracy theories. But what he learns is that while he may be more formally educated than many of the folks in Abby's Texas town, that doesn't make him better -- in fact, he may be worse. Prejudice starts with not understanding someone who's different from you, and Vengeance helps to put in perspective that different is simply that: different.

Novak's sweat is all over the screen here. Choosing to star in the first feature you've also written and directed is a lot to bite off for your first chew. He may have benefited from having some distance from all three of the top above-the-line roles. He proves himself as an actor's director, eliciting memorable performances from his actors, including John Mayer's hysterical and self-mocking turn as Ben's womanizing wingman. Each member of the cast delivers standout work, most of all Ashton Kutcher , who's so fantastic as small-town music producer Quentin Sellers that it's impossible to see anyone else wearing the character's cleavage-torn white T-shirt, scarf, and white suit and pulling it (or the role) off. Quentin says to Ben at one point that "nobody writes anything original, we just translate." In Vengeance , Novak translates New York City and Texas culture with such accuracy in strokes both broad and specific that it's hilarious rather than offensive -- and even if you don't totally get it, it's still funny. Meanwhile, big chunks of dialogue are overfull of "wisdom" to spew at viewers -- wise words that Novak probably intended as quotes destined for wall art. But the messages fly so fast that it's nearly impossible to catch and process them. Still, that's a small quibble, as is the movie's inconsistent sound quality. The biggest issue, though, is the ending, which just doesn't ring true for Ben -- at least, for Ben as played by Novak. It's the one time that Novak taking on three large roles in the production seems to be a problem, as Ben becomes Novak's fantasy version of himself rather than the more believable version of himself that he plays throughout the film. Or, perhaps this is because his message is too effective: If he's begging viewers to truly see people for their whole selves, we can't help but see him through his character and through his work. Better said through the words of Abilene Shaw, "heart sees heart."

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about how curiosity initiates Ben's journey and leads to personal growth. Why is this an important character strength? How can changing your environment or home base, even for a short time, help broaden your perspective?

Are drug use and drinking glamorized in Vengeance ? Are there realistic consequences? Why does that matter?

How does the script wink at some of the rules of filmmaking? What elements get a "payoff"?

A few characters make memorable speeches about their theories on human psychology and the world we live in. Which opinions, if any, resonated with you?

Movie Details

  • In theaters : July 29, 2022
  • On DVD or streaming : August 16, 2022
  • Cast : B.J. Novak , Issa Rae , Dove Cameron
  • Director : B.J. Novak
  • Inclusion Information : Female actors, Black actors, Queer actors
  • Studio : Focus Features
  • Genre : Comedy
  • Topics : Brothers and Sisters
  • Character Strengths : Curiosity
  • Run time : 94 minutes
  • MPAA rating : R
  • MPAA explanation : language and brief violence
  • Last updated : October 29, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

Suggest an Update

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“A Real Pain” Fails to Stay in Its Discomfort Zone

vengeance movie review new yorker

A road movie with a twist, “A Real Pain”—which Jesse Eisenberg wrote, directed, and stars in—builds the eventful but thin foreground of its journey on a deep foundation of memory and history. It’s a strange movie—far better as a concept than as a drama, though the concept is strong enough to provide a sense of inner experience, making up for what the outer, onscreen experience lacks.

It’s the story of two cousins, David Kaplan (Eisenberg) and Benji Kaplan (Kieran Culkin), who travel together from New York to Poland to honor the memory of their late grandmother, Dory, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Poland and came to the United States after the war. She never spoke to her grandsons of her experiences, but she bequeathed them money to travel to Poland and see the house where she’d grown up. The more organized of the two, David, has arranged for them to join a Jewish-heritage tour and then to make a detour to their grandmother’s home town.

But the trip means far more to the two men than its ostensible purpose suggests. Three weeks apart in age—they seem to be pushing forty—and fraternally close since childhood, Benji and David have lately drifted apart. David, from whose perspective almost all of the action is seen, is a digital-ad salesman living in New York City with his wife and their young son. He’s detail-oriented, cautious, and neurotically inhibited. Benji is a perma-slacker with no steady job and no stated ambition. He lives in his mother’s house upstate, smokes lots of weed, and, since the death of Dory, with whom he was close, has been even deeper in the doldrums than usual. David and Benji speak less than they used to and see each other rarely—for which Benji blames David. So the Poland trip will be the two cousins’ reunion-and-reconciliation tour, whether or not Dory planned it that way. (I wouldn’t put it past her.)

David and Benji find themselves in a group with four other Jewish tourists. As with a platoon in a Second World War movie, the group is carefully scripted so as to display diversity that’s soon to form unity. Mark (Daniel Oreskes) and Diane (Liza Sadovy) are a retired couple from Shaker Heights, Ohio; Marcia (Jennifer Grey) is a recent divorcée who has moved back from California to her native New York and is seeking to put more substance into her life; and Eloge (Kurt Egyiawan), a Rwandan man, survived the genocide there, moved to Winnipeg, made Jewish friends, and converted. Their tour guide is a young British man named James (Will Sharpe), an Eastern European historian from Oxford, who isn’t Jewish. None of them has much to say (other than James, with his informative spiel); they serve mainly as foils for the conflicts of Benji and David, with each other and with themselves.

These conflicts are mostly sparked by David’s embarrassment: Benji is wildly uninhibited, bringing an impulsive and ingenuous post-adolescent enthusiasm to his daily life, punctuating his conversation with “dude!” and “sweet!” and “snap!,” and chatting up whomever, wherever (including the T.S.A. agent at the airport). Benji sends David into a panic with the disclosure that he got them good marijuana for the trip, then tries to calm him down: “Really, they’re going to arrest two Jews in Poland for a little bit of weed?” For Benji, neither rules nor decorum matter: he’s unafraid of passing through alarmed doors and riding a train without paying; of missing a stop and getting separated from the group; of burping loudly at dinner; and, crucially, of voicing a blunt opinion backed by sincere and intense emotion.

“A Real Pain” is an overgrown-teen bromance in which Benji is uptight David’s Manic Pixie Dream Bro. If David is timid and obsessive, Benji is possessed of a weird, narcissistic empathy: his reaction to others is so strong that they disappear within his raging turmoil of laughter and tears. The bits and pieces of the duo’s past that get dredged up conversationally in the course of the tour drop in opportunely and disappear as conveniently; the dialogue is rigidly calculated to endow each situation with its exact meaning and to dispense the exact dose of backstory and the exact form of emotional expression required. The psychology of the characters is as superficial and as facile as the dialogue in which they get defined.

Yet, despite the flimsiness of this relationship drama, there’s something going on in “A Real Pain” that holds one’s attention. It’s cued, formally speaking, by the movie’s lack of flashbacks. That decision is an aesthetically neutral one: being against flashbacks in movies is like being against the pluperfect tense in books; what matters is how they’re used, or what use is made of their absence. For Eisenberg’s film, the decision is double-edged: from the perspective of the characters, exceptional demands are placed on the dialogue to make their past come to life, but the dialogue isn’t sufficiently rich or imaginative to meet the challenge. On the other hand, the movie depends on a concept that’s built into the cousins’ travels—visiting historical sites of grave personal significance to David and Benji. By keeping the narrative in the present tense, Eisenberg throws down a cinematic gauntlet, of bringing history to life in the present tense, photographically and dramatically. It’s here, in that quasi-documentary exploration of the sites that figure in the story, that the movie gains significance and power.

As the trek to historical sites gets under way, “A Real Pain” continues ambling amiably along with its windup psychology. But when the tour reaches the former Jewish quarter of Lublin, the movie suddenly wakes up. James introduces the group to places that were formerly of great import to Jewish life in the city and which now serve banal and secular functions. The filming and the editing of the scene, for all its relative simplicity, conveys, above all, cinematographic effort—not physical exertion but aesthetic resolve. It conspicuously reflects the urgent quest for a distinctive, personal, and original way to film those places in order to embody their significance in the movie.

That effort reaches even further when the group visits the site of the Majdanek concentration and extermination camp. The images of their arrival, complete with startling views of ordinary apartment buildings in the not-too-distant background, graphically capture the grim historical reality that James cites; namely, that the camp was a mere two miles from Lublin town square—thus, was too nearby to have been concealed from the townspeople. The word “extermination” is never used in the film; it doesn’t have to be. When James brings the group to visit the gas chambers disguised as showers, Eisenberg, working with the cinematographer Michał Dymek, presents a plain, frontal shot of the room, with a blankly candid view of its walls covered in blue stains—vestiges, as James explains, of the poison gas, Zyklon B, used to kill the victims.

Little more needs to be said, or shown. But the group is there, the actors are there, and “A Real Pain” brings fiction back with a series of closeups of the characters as they walk by and look into the gas chamber. They’re unusual closeups: the camera stands still as each character walks up to the lens, stops as if staring into it for a portrait, and moves on to make room for the next person. Whether it’s a symbol of the mutual gaze of the dead and the living, or of the past and the present, it’s still a show of actors and of characters, either too much or too little. Nonetheless, it’s also a thoughtful and surprising view that, at the very least, conjures a sense of great moment and distinguishes the sequence from the rest of the movie’s conventional and unquestioned realistic transparency.

Martin Scorsese’s possibly apocryphal remark that “Cinema is a matter of what’s in the frame and what’s out” is meaningful above all for its ambiguity. What’s inside the frame is the image; what’s outside it is the rest of the world; and a viewer, when watching a movie, brings both parts, the sliver of reality and the totality of it, to bear on the experience. “A Real Pain” depends artistically on the odd disproportion between what’s shown and what’s known, between the plain and fragmentary traces onscreen and the enormity, both in horror and in scale, of what they signify. Eisenberg may not have achieved a cinematic form that meets, in originality, the moral burden of his subject. But his effort to do so pushes viewers’ imagination outside the frame, both into the world at large and into other movies, ones that exist and ones that remain to be made. ♦

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‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Delivers A Fun New Adventure For Fans [Review]

Posted by Jessica Lancaster | Nov 1, 2024 | Animated Shows/Movies , Movie News , Netflix | 0 |

‘Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl’ Delivers A Fun New Adventure For Fans [Review]

For any Wallace & Gromit fan, checking out Vengeance Most Fowl is a no-brainer. The dynamic duo return for their second-ever feature film (following 2005’s Curse of the Were-Rabbit ), which also features a “smart gnome” and the return of the delightfully devious Feathers McGraw.

In Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl , Wallace leans a little too hard into his inventions — much to Gromit’s growing frustration. The final straw comes when Wallace develops Norbot, an artificially intelligent garden gnome whose over-use of garden shears quickly takes over Gromit’s garden. Meanwhile, Feathers McGraw, banished to life in a zoo exhibit following his diamond-thieving crimes, plots his escape. When Feathers hacks Norbot (and uses him to build an entire fleet of evil smart gnomes), Wallace finds himself in hot water with the police as his gnomes go on a crime spree.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl feels charmingly familiar. The feature uses some CGI enhancements, but largely sticks to the stop-motion style fans know and love the franchise for. The film “feels” like Wallace and Gromit, though perhaps a slightly modernized and elevated version.

Arguably the best part of the feature is Feathers McGraw. During a post-screening Q&A at the film’s premiere at AFI Fest, co-director Merlin Crossingham talked about the specifics of animating for the character. Crossingham said that working with Feathers McGraw is unique because so much of the character’s personality and humor comes from an extreme economy of movement; often, the less Feathers moves, the better. 

Cutting to an unblinking, unmoving bird shouldn’t be nearly as funny as it is. But it’s these moments that really showcase the thought and craftsmanship behind Vengeance Most Fowl ; each scene with Feathers feels so intentional and specific in its choices. With thoughtful visual and sound editing, a stationary look from a dead-eyed penguin can somehow convey exactly the emotion (and malice) needed.

vengeance movie review new yorker

In addition to easily bringing laughs to the film, Feathers proves an icon again and again. I loved that Vengeance Most Fowl was full of homages and references to other films and genre staples. Prison-bound (ie, zoo captive) Feathers provided plenty of opportunities to make these references shine. Long-time Wallace & Gromit fans will also easily spot references and tributes to previous installments; you can definitely go on a bit of an Easter Egg hunt with this one.

Besides Feathers, Wallace, Gromit, and Norbot, the feature also revolves around Inspector Mackintosh and the department’s new up-and-comer PC Mukherjee. The duo have some fun moments, but mostly exist to drive the plot along. A lot of their scenes felt too divorced from the rest of the film. I would have liked to see a better integration of their story with that of Wallace and Gromit’s. 

vengeance movie review new yorker

Vengeance Most Fowl follows a pretty predictable set of story beats; however, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Wallace & Gromit feels like the definition of “comfort media” — sure, you’re not experiencing many twists or surprises or new horizons here, but the familiarity of how everything plays out brings a sort of comfort fans are looking for. The audience wants cozy, silly shenanigans, tied up neatly with a bow by the story’s end. Vengeance Most Fowl delivers.

It’s hard to imagine any Wallace and Gromit fans disliking this one. Vengeance Most Fowl brings fan-favorite characters back to the screen, delivering a comforting story with plenty of laughs along the way. It may not break the mold, but it’s a perfectly good time.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl will debut in the US on Netflix January 3, 2025.

Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Review

'Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl' brings fan-favorite characters back to the screen, with a comforting story and plenty of laughs along the way. It doesn't do much to break the mold, but it's still a fun new adventure for fans.

About The Author

Jessica Lancaster

Jessica Lancaster

They say write what you know, and I definitely know how to be a nerd.

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IMAGES

  1. Movie Review: VENGEANCE

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  2. Vengeance movie review & film summary (2022)

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  3. Vengeance Review: A Dark Comedy That Hits Its Mark

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  5. Vengeance (2021)

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  6. Vengeance (2022) Review

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COMMENTS

  1. 'Vengeance' Review: A Dish Best Served With Frito Pie

    The older one, Ty (Boyd Holbrook), dragoons Ben into the scheme that gives the movie its title and its momentum. Ty is convinced that Abilene's death was the result of a shadowy, nefarious ...

  2. Vengeance movie review & film summary (2022)

    July 29, 2022. 6 min read. "Vengeance" sounds like the title of an action thriller. There have been films with that name before. But although vengeance is discussed in "Vengeance"—the first feature from writer/director/star B.J. Novak, co-star and co-writer of the American version of "The Office"—it has a lot more on its mind ...

  3. Comprehensive review for Vengeance. Discussion is welcome and ...

    At many points, Vengeance feels like a comedy of mockery disguised as earnest bridge-building, rather than the other way around, frequently playing like Blazing Saddles if Mel Brooks wrote Bart and company with learning disabilities. To be fair, Novak seems to hold his protagonist in low esteem too.

  4. 'Vengeance' Review: B.J. Novak's Terrific Directorial Debut

    Novak introduces redneck stereotypes only to detonate them in a one-of-a-kind movie that's so wide awake and sharp-edged it marks the arrival of a potentially major filmmaker. B.J. Novak 's ...

  5. Vengeance (2022)

    Vengeance: Directed by B.J. Novak. With B.J. Novak, Boyd Holbrook, Lio Tipton, Ashton Kutcher. A writer from New York City attempts to solve the murder of a girl he hooked up with and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her.

  6. Vengeance Review: B.J. Novak's Debut Is a Razor-Sharp Podcast Noir

    In life, she was just some doe-eyed singer chick who Ben half-remembered hooking up with a couple of times. In death, she's the perfect subject for the "Serial"-esque podcast that falls into ...

  7. Vengeance (2022)

    Vengeance, the directorial debut from writer and star B.J. Novak ("The Office"), is a darkly comic thriller about Ben Manalowitz, a journalist and podcaster who travels from New York City to West ...

  8. Vengeance REVIEW

    Natasha Alvar · July 26, 2022. Vengeance. Ben Manalowitz (B.J Novak) is a writer for The New Yorker, who's hoping to make his foray into the podcasting scene. He tries pitching some of his ...

  9. 'Vengeance' review: B.J. Novak looks for America in smart satire

    By Katie Walsh. July 28, 2022 7 AM PT. "Vengeance," the debut feature of writer-director-star B.J. Novak, opens with a scene of acidic social commentary that sets the tone for the smart satire ...

  10. B.J. Novak Unpacks Shocking 'Vengeance' Ending of Divided America

    Sadly, the opposite seems to be true. "Vengeance" stars as Novak as Ben Manalowitz, a New Yorker journalist looking to launch a podcast with a multi-hyphenate producer, played by Issa Rae. Ben ...

  11. 'Vengeance' Review: B.J. Novak at His Most Likably Unlikable

    From watching Vengeance, you'd guess much of Ben's life played out like this: beholden to stronger personalities, empowered by his byline and his "outside-of-Boston" degree. It's only ...

  12. Vengeance Review

    When Vengeance opens, it feels like a movie with a lot on its mind. A montage, set to Toby Keith's upbeat, casual " Red Solo Cups," depicts a rural Texan oil field as the site of a young ...

  13. Vengeance review: a murder mystery that's smart and funny

    Vengeance is many things: a compelling murder mystery, a funny City Slickers update, and a critique on true crime and podcast culture. That it succeeds at all three, while also leaving us ...

  14. 'Vengeance' Review: A Straight-Faced New Media Satire

    For a while, though, the filmmaker practices the same misdirection as Vengeance's trailers, reveling in broad social contrasts. Ben Manalowitz (Novak) writes for, natch, The New Yorker and enjoys a robust secondary career as a womanizer. He yearns for more, however, wanting to sell a story to a podcasting company run by Eloise (Issa Rae) that ...

  15. Review: B.J. Novak's 'Vengeance' is original and weird

    Ashton Kutcher (left) and B.J. Novak in "Vengeance.". Photo: Patti Perret / Focus Features. "Vengeance" is unexpected and, in the best way, weird. In his first film as a writer-director, B.J. Novak takes familiar elements, but puts them together in ways that are original and unexpected. Even when the plot turns go off the deep end, it ...

  16. Review: 'Vengeance' marks a dynamite feature directorial ...

    A New Yorker writer hits a wall of culture shock at the Texas funeral of an ex hook-up who may have been -- wait for it -- murdered. If you want to know more, head out to theaters where "Vengeance ...

  17. 'Vengeance' is a startlingly good first film from B.J. Novak

    July 27, 2022 at 2:10 p.m. EDT. (3.5 stars) The movie "Vengeance" — a black comedy about cultural arrogance, the opioid crisis, guns, storytelling and the need to, well, get even — marks ...

  18. Film Review: 'Vengeance' Gets Texas Right, 100 Percent

    In "Vengeance," filmmaker/actor Novak injects the right amount of comedy, quirkiness, drama, heart, intrigue and plot twists to cover the bases necessary to rank the film high on the list of Texas films. When Ty tells Ben that he calls his much younger brother El Stupido (Eli Bickel), Ty tells Ben it will not hurt his feelings because his ...

  19. Vengeance

    Novak plays Ben Manalowitz, a cocky New Yorker addicted to social media and the women on it. When his phone pings in the movie's opening and a mysterious voice informs him of his girlfriend's ...

  20. Vengeance Movie Review

    Parents need to know that Vengeance is a comedy thriller about a New York journalist who thinks he's found the perfect true-crime story in a small Texas town. Written and directed by and starring B.J. Novak (), the movie is about reevaluating preconceived notions that are based on where someone lives or what they do for a living.Most characters initially seem to play into broad stereotypes ...

  21. Donald Trump Wins, Promising a Second Term of Revenge

    Throughout this campaign, Trump has been deliberately coy about his extreme and radical agenda for a second term. He disavowed Project 2025, the nine-hundred-page governing blueprint spearheaded ...

  22. "Christmas Eve in Miller's Point" Transcends the ...

    In an extended sequence of late-night snacks and seductions at a bagel shop, featuring a memorable cameo by Elsie Fisher, Craig's smarty-pants riffs take on an earnest weight as Emily deems ...

  23. "A Real Pain" Fails to Stay in Its Discomfort Zone

    In Jesse Eisenberg's film, a shticky bromance obscures a thoughtful attempt to probe the legacy of the Holocaust. The film features, from left, Kieran Culkin, Jennifer Gray, Jesse Eisenberg ...

  24. Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl Review

    The Wallace & Gromit films have always been good at emotional elements, especially when they involve the near-silent beagle whose expressive face speaks volumes. While Vengeance Most Fowl could ...

  25. 'Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl' Delivers A Fun New Adventure

    The final straw comes when Wallace develops Norbot, an artificially intelligent garden gnome whose over-use of garden shears quickly takes over Gromit's garden. Meanwhile, Feathers McGraw, banished to life in a zoo exhibit following his diamond-thieving crimes, plots his escape. When Feathers hacks Norbot (and uses him to build an entire ...