It’s incredible how much talent has emerged from TV’s long-running series “The Office.”
Mindy Kaling is now a successful producer and screenwriter, as well as a best-selling author; John Krasinski has proven a legitimate tough-guy in front of the camera (“Jack Ryan,” “13 Hours”) and a skilled director behind it (both “Quiet Place” films); and Steve Carell can do almost anything, from satire to drama to rom-coms to biopics.
To that impressive list you can add B. J. Novak. This former “Office” worker serves as writer, director and star of the terrific new movie “Vengeance.”
Wikipedia has described the film as a “dark comedy,” but that is misleading. “Vengeance” is certainly funny, and it has some darkness — since its principal plot involves the mysterious death of a woman alone in the Texas desert. But Novak’s script is more concerned with social commentary — or perhaps I should say, social media.
Novak plays an ambitious New York journalist aching for more relevance and fame. Lying in bed after a faceless one-night stand — which pretty much characterizes his whole approach to life — Ben gets a call stating that his girlfriend has died. But he doesn’t have girlfriend.
Indeed, as a man who needs to check his cell to recall which girl he’s sleeping with, the writer can barely even remember Abby; yet her family is so distraught that he winds up attending the funeral in Texas. Here, rather than grieving and helping her loved ones, he decides the whole shebang would make a great online story — partly about Abby, but mostly a smug and condescending portrait of her close-knit clan and their red-state milieu, about which he knows nothing.
And I do mean nothing.
When Ben records their discussion of the Alamo and exults out loud about how Texas won that battle, we can tell this urban Northerner has gotten in over his head. Shortly thereafter, the writer meets a small-town record-producer — played to impressive perfection by Ashton Kutcher — who is far better than Ben at articulating the fragmentation of American society, and the cost we pay in relationships that are superficial or broken. Or nonexistent.
Though Abby’s family is sometimes funny, they have a deep-seated wisdom and connection that ultimately upends everything Ben had planned for his posts; and this reorientation will continue even after Novak whips out one or two nifty plot twists.
In this way the film — despite its dark title, its downbeat ending and its occasional satire — bravely beams a beacon-like light on the isolation, cynicism and media obsession of the modern age.
Late in the film, when Abby’s mother reflects on her many mistakes and finally tells Ben, “It’s all regrets; so make ’em count” — this comes across with the force of revelation.
Smart, engaging, comical and relevant, Novak’s well-reviewed film is a keen dissection of our cultural moment — and a promising start for this fledgling writer-director.
