Vengeance (2022)
What is it?
A comedy.
A thriller.
A mystery.
Or just a salad packaged as a sandwich.
This is the 2022 movie that I liked the most. Unfortunately, it’s a movie structured like a sandwich when a salad would have easily sufficed. The slices of bread surrounding this story suck. The beginning is unnecessary. Two minutes in, I was briefly regretting my decision to buy a ticket. And the ending certainly stumbles off the plate. But the middle is very delicious. It’s creative, dark, and witty. So I’m going to toss the bread into the bin and eat on!
After I left the movie theatre, I walked out thinking three things…
#1
Ashton Kutcher deserves an Oscar nomination. His performance is exceptional (among a pretty deep cast that includes B.J. Novak, the underutilized Issa Rae, and J. Smith-Cameron). Just listen to Kutcher’s monologue about halfway through the movie. It’s as captivating as watching Paul McCartney figure out Get Back in the recent Beatles documentary. Ashton Kutcher is locked in and draining half-court threes.
#2
B.J. Novak has me on whatever his next movie is. I definitely want to come back to see his second movie. It’s the same feeling I had with Jordan Peele after Get Out. And Us did not disappoint. Novak’s screenplay is cool. (A novelization might be cooler.) Although, I suppose this shouldn’t be a surprise given his writing credits for The Office. His directing style isn’t flashy, but maybe with a second project, he’ll take some visual risks and discard the slices of bread being used as training wheels!
#3
This might be the best portrayal of millennial characters on the big screen since The Social Network (and the funniest since Mean Girls). No matter where this movie goes, its North Star remains the idea of the millennial experience (even if that means dealing with John Mayer stunt casting shenanigans). The movie feels like an authentic expression of someone’s millennial experience transcribed over New Hollywood-era character development. That last idea might be a stretch…but so was thinking I would ever promote an Oscar campaign for Ashton Kutcher.
