With the release of Vengeance, character actor B. J. Novak moves into the rank of writer-director-star in the Hollywood hierarchy.  Probably best known for his run on “The Office,” Novak has written and directed episodes of that and other television shows but this is his feature film writing and directing debut.  It’s an audacious debut, but more because of the performances he coaxes from his cast than any other reason.

Vengeance follows magazine writer Ben Manalowitz (Novak) from New York to desolate Texas to attend a funeral for a woman named Abilene Shaw he went out with a few times.  But her family thinks the relationship is deeper and her brother Ty (Boyd Holbrook) believes Abilene was murdered.  Ben pitches the idea of a podcast about her death to his editor (Issa Rae) and soon Ben is questioning everyone about the woman he barely knew — and discovering a great deal about himself in the process.

If Woody Allen wrote and directed thrillers he might have imagined something like this.  Ben is a fish-out-of-water in Texas, and his journalistic techniques are not exactly top of the line.  But he has chutzpah, and Abilene’s family takes him to heart, something he has never before experienced.  Much of the film’s meat involves Ben learning to trust, and like, the Shaws, while they attempt to teach him some humility and how things work in Texas.  Sometimes that is not pretty; self-deprecating humor is Novak’s strong suit, and he does not hesitate to depict his character as foolish, fatuous or unenlightened.  The balancing act that Novak takes between making fun of Texans and showing them to be more honest and forthright than New Yorkers is generally appropriate and sometimes skilled.

Why Vengeance as a title for a movie where just one punch is thrown in the first hour-and-a-half?  Well that comes during the final few minutes, as Ben determines what really happened to Abilene and what he is going to do about it.  The outcome is jarring, but it feels pretty solid, given the legal shenanigans the story presents.  And it raises questions in viewers as to what we may have done had we been in his position.  Novak’s writing, especially for other characters, is often excellent, and Boyd Holbrook and Ashton Kutcher in particular are given really meaningful dialogue to enact.  Kutcher’s sequence with a young female singer is exquisite.  There is a lot to like in this movie, even though its sense of podcast journalism seems frightfully overblown (but that could be me).  Good debut, interesting outcome.  ☆ ☆ ☆.  6 August 2022.