The world doesn't need another empty genre exercise. But as Blue Ruin reminds us, it can always use more filmmakers of Saulnier's resourcefulness, sensitivity and quiet assurance.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 5, 2015

With the same brand of realist irony the Coens used to cool down Blood Simple, writer-director Jeremy Saulnier slows the genre's heartbeat to gripping effect.

| Original Score: A | Jan 5, 2015

Blue Ruin starts promisingly with a hairy hobo living in a blue, rusty, bullet-holed Pontiac on a Delaware beach.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 5, 2015

[A]n atmospheric, elegant piece, a more delicate, intriguingly nervous piece of pulp noir.

| Jul 1, 2014

Saulnier is also a cinematographer, and he's in complete control of the film's conflation of human-scale horror and tragicomedy.

| May 8, 2014

Blair, an unheralded actor, carries the whole picture. He's in practically every scene, and his performance is fascinating because in his eyes you can see the character struggling desperately with himself.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 8, 2014

Saulnier works intelligent and engrossing variations on the revenge thriller.

| May 8, 2014

Saulnier makes impressive use of silence and slow camera movements, allowing the suspense to simmer until violence seems practically inevitable.

| May 8, 2014

Though coloured by indie sensibilities, Blue Ruin offers the momentum of hard-edged pulp and the viscera of full-on exploitation cinema.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 6, 2014

Saulnier spills a lot of blood, but he's an extraordinarily responsible and appealing craftsman.

| May 5, 2014

A stripped-down tale of revenge with bloodied hands and a blackened heart, this viscerally intelligent thriller takes a new stab at an old genre with refreshingly distressing results.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 4, 2014

You couldn't ask for a more unlikely avenger than the ill-equipped sort-of hero of Blue Ruin, and that's precisely why it's far, far more suspenseful than the typical violent revenge thriller.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 2, 2014

A very bloody film noir, directed with tremendous ingenuity by Jeremy Saulnier, Blue Ruin benefits from its pared-down style and macabre humour.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 2, 2014

A riveting revenge thriller written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier and built around a singular performance by Macon Blair.

| Original Score: B+ | May 2, 2014

To call Blue Ruin a revenge thriller is to sell this barbed-wire-sharp and altogether surprising American indie short.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | May 2, 2014

As an exercise in cinematic style, "Blue Ruin" is well worth seeing.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 1, 2014

Essentially a lurid revenge story but filtered through an arthouse sensibility, peppered with stillness and deglamourised violence.

| Original Score: 4/5 | May 1, 2014

Blue Ruin is a low-budget yet highly accomplished revenge thriller although whether you have the stomach for it is another matter.

| May 1, 2014

"Blue Ruin" is a movie about revenge, but it reaches far past the bottom-shelf titillations of fantasy to tell a richer, character-driven story with a protagonist who's less avenging angel than ghost.

| May 1, 2014

The filmmaker works with economy and has a knack for creating a sense of foreboding, which is good because the plot is simply a working out of the old saw that violence begets violence.

| Original Score: 3/4 | May 1, 2014