The cast including Issa Rae and Ashton Kutcher makes Novak's Lone Star State darkly comedic morality tale come alive.
He ends up staying with Abilene's family and, in other hands,"Vengeance" might have stopped there as a fish-out-of-New-York water"Green Acres" for the internet era. And, yes, Novak does manage to wring some laugh-out-loud culture-clash moments from the situation, as when Ben has to Shazam"Deep in the Heart of Texas" to find out the title of the song or is puzzled by the family's bone-deep loyalty to Whataburger.
But Novak has more on his mind than pointing out the obvious differences between red and blue America. Investigating Abilene's death forces him to confront his own hypocrisy and deal with the complexities of the people he meets who run counter to his stereotypes. One of those is Quentin Sellers , a record producer based in Marfa who recorded Abilene but also has insight into the desolation and isolation of living in the West Texas outback and contemporary, social-media obsessed America.
Novak keeps the audience guessing about where the story's going but doesn't stretch the boundaries of reality too much. Despite some exaggeration for humor, everyone on the screen feels like a real person. So when Ben makes a connection with the family and they open their doors and their arms to him, it is especially gratifying.
The worst thing about"Vengeance" has little to do with any aspect of the film itself. It's that this movie -- which is vying with Richard Linklater's equally keenly observant"Apollo 10 1/2" as the Texas-set movie of the year -- was shot in New Mexico, not Texas,
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