Vengeance

This movie first and foremost did not work on almost every level. It was unbelievable from the start, it did not flow and the character development between the family and the main character was terrible. I really don't want to get long winded. I just want to express my opinion and say the acting was horrible, the story line was something a kid in high school would write. It simply didn't work. BJ is a very one dimensional actor and does not have the layers it takes to become this high class NY player that somehow hooks up with so many women that he forgets who the girl is who dies. It was ridiculous how the family of the girl who died, quickly falls in love with this absolute dork who is going to save the day with some abstruse pod cast that will somehow save the day. The plot and storyline did not flow and again the acting was no Bueno. I have no clue how those people reviewing this movie could say anything positive unless there is some kind of incentive to say anything remotely positive. I want Vengeance for wasting 2 hours of my life watching this weak movie. Don't wait for the movie to get better because it never does. If there was a satisfaction guarantee Hollywood would go bankrupt in less than a year... $ave your $2.50 by just watching the trailers for the best parts💯.

Ryan can't cook a hot pocket, or direct a movie. This is really bad writing and acting, predictable plot, poor pacing. No Guiffeau's oh, huh, aha moment, shows he doesn't even know basic screen writing.

"Vengeance" 2022 is an intelligent, interesting movie that I felt compelled to talk about immediately after it finished. Mind: when I say that "Vengeance" is an intelligent, interesting movie, I am *not* saying that it is pretentious, or that it goes out of its way to be difficult to understand, or that people dressed entirely in black in Manhattan will brag about sitting through it. This is not a movie trying to be intelligent. This is a movie that is intelligent. "Vengeance" is *not* a chore to watch. I laughed out loud several times, I also had to close my eyes tight during a suspenseful scene, and I cared about Abby, a Texas girl from a very small town who ended up dead. The movie felt so real to me that I wondered throughout if it were based on something that actually happened to the film's writer, director, and star, B. J. Novak. "Vengeance" includes some plot twists, and it defies genre boundaries, so it's hard to give much information without spoiling it. Abby, a wannabe singer from a small Texas town, dies. Her brother phones Ben, a journalist living in New York City, and invites him to Abby's funeral. Ben travels to Texas and realizes he is in a world very different from the one he inhabits in Manhattan. He decides to produce a podcast entitled "Dead White Girl." His topics and themes will include the big divides in America and the opioid crisis. And much more than that, I can't say. Again, I laughed out loud several times in this movie. The humor is so deadpan and dry I think viewers not paying attention might not get it. I also cared about how the movie presented the cultural divide between Ben and Abby's family. The opening scene is two guys talking about their sex lives, which consist of casual hook-ups with no commitment. Novak has said that much of it was improvised, and there is a 17 minute version he will release eventually. Novak's interlocutor is John Mayer, a musician known for having had lots of hook ups. I walked into the theater not knowing much about BJ Novak and knowing nothing about John Mayer and I was able to enjoy this scene. Ashton Kutcher, as Quentin Sellers - note the last name - a music producer in Marfa, Texas, gives a performance I would sit through the entire movie again to watch. Kutcher is mesmerizing. He gives not one but two speeches I really need to hear again. One is about sound; the other is about ... well just go watch the movie. Issa Rae, a very beautiful woman, plays the part of Ben's producer. Her role and her performance are weak spots in the movie. She doesn't come across as a hardnosed, demanding, producer/editor. She comes across as the sweet and bubbly, eager to please lead in a romantic comedy, which she may play someday. Ben phones her from Texas; she listens to his recordings. The Academy now requires movies to include a certain percentage of non-white performers to be considered for awards. It's possible Issa Rae is in the film for that reason. That's unfortunate. Her role could have been more sharply written, so that she wasn't just the token non-white woman in the film. Terry Gross, host of the NPR show "Fresh Air," provides a cameo voice.

SCORE: 2.9/10 The first 3/4 of this movie was so unbelievably bad. It tried to be funny and serious and failed at both. The jokes were not funny and completely undermined the serious moments that actually had a lot of potential. I cared about this story just as much as Ben cared about Abilene at the start of the film. As soon as I heard Dove Cameron's accent and discovered she had been casted as a 17 year old, I knew what I was getting myself into. The one thing I for sure walked away with was that I do not like Texas. Anyways, back to the terrible story. It starts out with a comedic portrayal of Ben and Abilene's relationship and tries to spin it into something the audience is supposed to care about. If this movie went all in on the comedy, it would've been better, just like how it would've been better if they had decided to make the story serious. The decision to try and make it both really killed any connection I could've had to the story and it felt without purpose, up until the last 10 minutes of the movie. Once he unlocked her phone it did get a bit more interesting, but it was too little too late. There was pretty good dialogue throughout, but it was completely overshadowed by a boring story and the worst camera work I have ever seen in any movie. The editing was atrocious and there were multiple points where you could blatantly see errors, particularly during B. J. Novak and Ashton Kurcher's first encounter. Big swing and a miss with a concept that had lots of potential.

This is NOT Liam Neeson-style vengeance. This isn't even an action-revenge movie. It's a study in characters - of how people act in today's world. How do you spend your "time". It has guns, Whataburger, love, angst, drugs, and a heavy side of introspection. Everything's bigger in Texas, including the stereotypes. This is not a movie I would've seen if it weren't for the "unlimited movie pass". That said, it's one of the best films I've seen this year, and certainly better than NOPE. Twists? You bet. Happy ending? Depends on your perspective. Vengeance? Fun. Definitely fun..

I will always appreciate and admire a film that is very clearly the singular creative vision of one person. BJ Novak clearly had some things he wanted to say, and this film often feels like it was his outlet for venting his thoughts about humanity. There's a lot of philosophical dialogue where characters disclose their feelings about relationships, regret, isolation, morality, etc. It's a film that covers so much thematic ground that I have to praise it for how far it reaches. The film succeeds in being thought-provoking on so many occasions and the story is surprisingly heartwarming. I think the central idea upon which everything else hinges is that connection is what breeds caring. If you don't care about someone it's because you don't feel connected to them-not necessarily because you're different. Unfortunately, with ambition also comes a scatterbrained tone in this case. There are so many jarring tonal shifts between comedy, dark drama, and ponderous dialogue. This also makes for a plot that feels all over the place and often directionless. So many times throughout this story I didn't even really know what the movie was about because the characters' goals kept changing so often. This is a strange piece of work, but it's a creative and original one. Please go check this out in a theater if you can.

Not a comedy. Not a thriller. Quite boring to watch. Has got the look and feel of a cheaply produced television movie, with a B (or C?) listed actor in the leading role. Bummer. The story is really going nowhere. It has not got any spark or punch. Completely forgettable. Please do not pay for this inferior product.

Vengeance falls in the category "Movie about the minds and culture of the Midwest and South", where East and West Coast Americans show an effort to understand Americans in the central and Southern states, and then generously educate everyone about their new wisdom (typically around the lines of "they're not that stupid", or "they're not that crazy"). We usually get one of these every six months these days: movies such as Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Hillbilly Elegy or Irresistible, with which one can draw the most parallels here. However, Irresistible -maybe ultimately the best to date in this new genre- was funny and clever, and Vengeance is unfortunately neither. It is certainly condescending of BJ Novak to make a movie to validate the Southern thinking and values (who have him the moral authority to put his seal of approval on it?), but it would all have been okay, at least in my book, had he been funny or insightful. Instead, two thirds of the movie are spent depicting Texas with huge stereotypes, but it never quite gets to be funny, or even come close to touch any truth. The movie gets marginally better towards the end, mainly thanks to great acting from Ashton Kutcher. Overall, a good one to skip.

Really poor writing, cast, camera, acting. The only reason for initial high rating must be bots . What a World. It's so bad one might think it is intentional.

Wow. I did not expect to be so impressed by this heartland-whodunit-comedy. The writing is top-notch, albeit a little too polished in parts. The examinations of the legacies we leave behind and the urge to commodify or gain notoriety off the backs of others' grief and trauma were really well explored. I also wasn't expecting the found family themes to be so well portrayed and for Ashton Kutcher to steal every scene he occupied. A breezy watch at a tight sub-two-hour runtime. It might be in my top 5 for the year-top 10 for sure. Will definitely watch it again before it leaves theaters.