Vengeance, directed by B.J. Novak: Culture Clash Between New York City and Rural Texas

Vengeance, the 2022 comedy-mystery drama starring and directed by B.J. Novak, is a surprisingly compelling and thoughtful film. Based on the title and seeing the trailer, you’d be forgiven for assuming it’s another thriller in the desert entry, with the usual Tarantino, Coen Brothers, and other 90s, 2000s influences. While some of these can be entertaining in their own right, Vengeance is something different.

Novak is Ben Manalowitz, a smug New York City hipster who we see in the first scene at a rooftop party in most likely Brooklyn, sharing cynical zingers about the pointlessness of relationships and monogamy with his equally vacuous and intoxicated buddies.

Novak’s character, who is actually named Ben, reminds me a little of Ben Stiller, especially in some of the work he’s done for Noah Baumbach, such as Greenberg. He manages to offset some of his arrogance and smugness with a self-awareness and at least a latent desire to improve. In Vengeance, this is a gradual process that has him transplanted in an extremely unlikely place for someone like him, rural Texas.

After getting a phone call from a distraught man telling Ben that his “girlfriend” Abilene has just died, Ben at first doesn’t even know who she is. She was, in fact, one of many women he…