Vengeance focuses on a radio host (B.J. Novak) from New York City attempts to solve the murder of his girlfriend and travels down south to investigate the circumstances of her death and discover what happened to her. Novak is playing the lead role of Ben Manalowitz, Boyd Holbrook (Narcos, The Predator, Logan) playing Ty Shaw, and Ashton Kutcher also has in a key role.
The story begins in earnest when New Yorker writer and aspiring public intellectual Ben Manalowitz (Novak) gets a call at his Manhattan apartment late one night from Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), who lives in one of the flattest backwaters in West Texas, a small town five hours’ drive from Abilene, which is two hours and forty minutes from Dallas. Ty is calling to tell Ben that his sister, Ben’s girlfriend—who is oddly also named Abilene, Abby for short—has died.
Ben doesn’t have a girlfriend named Abby. He’s a player who hooks up with many women. But a quick check of his phone confirms that he did indeed have sex with an aspiring singer named Abby (Lio Tipton) a few times and then forgot about her. Somehow he ends up letting himself be talked into traveling to Abby’s hometown, attending her funeral, and commiserating with her grieving family, which also includes her younger sisters Paris (Isabella Amara) and Kansas City (Dove Cameron), her kid brother El Stupido (Elli Abrams Beckel), and her mother Sharon (J. Smith-Cameron). Then Ty tells Ben that Abby was murdered, probably by a Mexican drug dealer named Sancholo (Zach Villa), and asks if he’ll help the family seek, well, you know.
Ben is a narcissist who seems to view every relationship and experience as a way of raising his status as a writer and quasi-celebrity, so it seems unbelievable at first that he’d travel to Texas to attend the funeral of a woman he didn’t really know. But the notion begins to seem more plausible once he starts talking to the family and slotting them into his prefabricated East Coast media-industrial-complex notions of “red state” and “blue state” people, and spinning his theories about temporal dislocation. Modern technology, he says, allows every person to exist in every moment except the present if they so choose. The desire for vengeance, we are told, is exclusively a backward-looking urge.
Vengeance is a 2022 American dark comedy thriller film written and directed by B. J. Novak, in his directorial debut. It stars Novak, Boyd Holbrook, Dove Cameron, Issa Rae, and Ashton Kutcher. Jason Blum is a producer under his Blumhouse Productions banner, and Greg Gilreath and Adam Hendricks are producers under their Divide/Conquer banner.
Vengeance had its world premiere at the Tribeca Festival on June 12, 2022, and was theatrically released in the United States on July 29, 2022, by Focus Features. It received generally favorable reviews from critics.
Principal photography on the film began in Albuquerque, New Mexico in March 2020, but was halted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In January 2021, Isabella Amara joined the cast of the film, with production resuming that month. In March 2021, J. Smith-Cameron and Lio Tipton joined the cast of the film, with Focus Features set to distribute.
In the United States and Canada, Vengeance was released alongside DC League of Super-Pets, and was projected to gross around $2 million from 998 theaters on its opening weekend. The film made $650,000 on its first day and a total of $1.8 million over the weekend, finishing 10th. Deadline Hollywood noted that while the amount was “not super,” being a low-budget film that received a theatrical release would make it “more attractive and stand-out in a streaming and PVOD menu.” The film fell 60% to $720,000 in its second weekend.
Vengeance (2022)
Directed by: B.J. Novak
Starring: Dove Cameron, Lio Tipton, Boyd Holbrook, Ashton Kutcher, B.J. Novak, Issa Rae, J. Smith-Cameron, Sarah Minnich, Zach Villa, Grayson Berry, Clint Obenchain, Melissa Chambers, Isabella Amara
Screenplay by: B.J. Novak
Production Design by: Courtney Andujar, Hillary Andujar
Cinematography by: Lyn Moncrief
Film Editing by: Andy Canny
Costume Design by: Rachel Sage Kunin
Set Decoration by: Marcia Calosio, David Hack
Art Direction by: Billy W. Ray
MPAA Rating: R for language and brief violence.
Distributed by: Focus Features
Release Date: July 29, 2022
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