Review: Vengeance (2022)
What starts as a fish-out-of-water comedy gets deeper until 'Everything means everything'
Vengeance (2022)
Written and directed by B.J. Novak
When you’re an up-and-coming writer who has achieved New Yorker staff-writer level of success, what’s next? To expand your brand, of course.
So when Ben Manalowitz learns that a woman whom he met and slept with a few times when he was in Austin for a SXSW panel has been found dead in a west Texas oil field, his reaction is natural. Once he recovers from the shock, he reacts the way any ambitious, talented writer would: he decides to travel to west Texas and do a piece about what he suspects is a murder.
This comedy-drama, which marked the directorial debut of B.J. Novak — famous for his recurring role on “The Office” and for being one of that show’s writers — starts out as a classic fish-out-of-water comedy. Manalowitz (Novak) and his New York haircut draw a combination of suspicion and mockery from the natives — the attempt at a rural wardrobe, hastily purchased from LL Bean, doesn’t fool anybody — but he only plans to be there for the few days necessary to collect local color and make some contacts, which he can follow up with by phone after his return to New York.
But then something happens to change his mind. First, the family of Abilene Shaw thinks Ben was much more of a boyfriend than a casual hookup; assuming he’s in mourning along with them, they put him up at their house, ask him to speak at the funeral, and start showing him around. Her brother Ty (Boyd Holbrook), an aggressively demonstrative combination of loudmouth and mourning sibling who is constantly grabbing Ben around the shoulders in a cis-gendered bro-hug, wants Ben there, wants him to investigate.
So when Ben realizes that instead of a New Yorker article he could turn Abilene’s death into a true-crime podcast, Ty and his family are all for it — maybe he can solve the “murder,” or whatever her death was, and bring them closure. Ben sells the idea to a well-known podcast producer, and he’s off and running.
The family takes Ben to a rodeo where he unintentionally draws attention to himself — this is more of the fish-out-of-water part of the movie — thus inadvertently introducing himself to the townspeople. But the film grows darker as Ben uncovers more information about who Abilene was (an aspiring singer, which explains why she was at SXSW — an annual event so well-known that even the west Texas small-towners refer to it as “South-by”). He thinks he’s struck gold when he travels to Marfa and interviews Quintin Sellers (Ashton Kutcher), the music producer who produced and recorded Abilene.
Ben watches as the producer inspires another aspiring singer by telling her that the recording she’s about to make is an echo of the Big Bang that launched the universe. Sellers is surprisingly articulate, speaking to Ben in his language about economic and cultural forces that Abilene, her family, and the other residents of the area are subject to.
Sellers’ theories sound good, which is all Ben needs for his podcast. The void behind Sellers’ eyes as he spiels complex communications theories tips off the viewer that no matter how good they sound, they don’t really make sense. Ben doesn’t care because the ideas lend gravitas to what he’s trying to do with the podcast. His producer back in New York, played by Issa Rae, loves the material. The initial episodes she’s edited will be a hit, she tells him.
But everything comes to a halt when Ty’s family accidentally reveals the truth they’ve been covering up. Spoilers follow.
The movie attempts to do a few different things. On the basic level, it’s a satisfying fish-out-of-water comedy. Secondly, it seems to be genuine in its attempt to paint a picture of white middle-and-upper-working class Texas culture, and judging by this feature in Texas Monthly, it succeeded. Thirdly, it takes a cynical approach to true-crime podcasts and to the popular modern notions that pseudo-intellectual takes on American culture from the mouths of journalists, amateur would-be anthropologists, and self-appointed experts can tell us anything of value; contrarily, it punctures the conspiracy-theory mindset. Most of all, it declares as hollow the true-crime podcast as it’s currently practiced, in which episode after episode seems like it’s all leading to a stunning conclusion and then offers no conclusion at all — merely a bucket of intriguing but unanswered questions.
Having achieved this nihilistic plateau in his work, Ben prepares to depart the scene. At a farewell dinner, one of Abilene’s sisters blurts out the truth: Abilene wasn’t someone who never did drugs, who “never touched so much as an Advil,” as they have been repeating to Ben up to this point. She was, in fact, an opioid addict — and the official cause of death, an overdose, is almost certainly accurate.
This admission doesn’t just blow up the version of events promulgated by the Shaw family and many of the locals who knew Abilene. It destroys Ben’s whole podcast. What he developed as a portrait of flyover residents at the mercy of vague, unseen cultural forces that doom them to ignorance and irrelevance is now just a story about one more overdose victim. And while America’s opioid addiction and the pharma companies that enabled and profited from it is a great story, it’s one that has been fully told. He’s got nothing.
And then, in a surprising climax, Ben does uncover the truth about what exactly did happen to Abilene weeks before in that godforsaken patch of desert.
B.J. Novak is a terrific actor and writer; you know that. As a directorial debut, “Vengeance” is a solid effort. Ashton Kutcher should have been considered for a supporting actor nomination for his performance as a character who is simultaneously sincere and cynical, who believes, as he says at the end of the movie, that with respect to “takes” and quasi-expert analysis by talking heads, if everything means everything, then nothing means anything.
Lio Tipton, an appealing actress who got a featured role in the action comedy “Love Hurts” currently in theaters, plays Abilene Shaw in captured footage — TikToks, video calls, a single-cam videotape of a performance in a tiny venue. She has talent, and a unique look. Maybe the role in “Love Hurts” will remind directors of her.
Finally, J. Smith-Cameron, who plays the mother of the Shaw family, delivers real presence and intensity in what seems like an underwritten role. She delivers a closing monologue that lacks resonance, not because she delivers it poorly, to the contrary; it fails to land because it doesn’t seem to come from anywhere in the movie up to that point. I got the sense that it’s less that her character was underwritten and more that some of her crucial lines leading up to that point were cut.
In all, “Vengeance” is worth seeing, on Amazon or wherever you might find it, especially for fans of B.J. Novak or Ashton Kutcher.