There’s the palpable sense that Dwight, the central character in Blue Ruin, has seen quite a few of those movies, and maybe caught a showing of the Coen brothers’ adaptation of No Country For Old Men on late night TV. He’s a man on a revenge mission, just as we’ve seen countless times before, but he isn’t exactly unwavering in his resolve, or even particularly adept at handling a firearm. And it’s the character’s vulnerability that makes Blue Ruin so gripping from beginning to end. Dwight, we soon learn, has been waiting to avenge the murder of his parents 20 years before. On learning the whereabouts of his quarry, he suddenly clicks into life; he refuels his Sedan, reattaches the battery, and heads off to Virginia to find his mark. But Dwight quickly discovers that he’s anything but the cold-hearted assassin or keen survivalist he might have hoped – all those things that movie stars made look so easy on the big screen turn out to be far more difficult to carry out in practice. On a low budget (partly acquired through Kickstarter), writer, director and cinematographer Jeremy Saulnier crafts an unpredictable and absorbing indie thriller. So much of Blue Ruin’s suspense springs from its gradual drip-feed of information: the opening 20 minutes, executed almost without a single line of dialogue, serve as a kind of film within a film, establishing Dwight as an ordinary man driven to murder by his own misguided obsession. We learn about Dwight not through exposition, but through the clues present in every shot. At a time when it seems to be becoming increasingly difficult to get low-key thrillers funded, Blue Ruin stands as a refreshingly sharp and direct modern example of the genre. Macon’s endlessly watchable leading turn is supported by Home Alone’s Devin Ratray as a gun-collecting old high-school friend, and Kevin Kolack as one of the slippery enemies Dwight makes during his ill-advised revenge campaign. Beneath the occasional bursts of crimson gore and pitch-black comedy moments, there’s something else, too: a subtle yet effective meditation on the fruitlessness of violence, and the psychological toll an act of vengeance can leave behind. Blue Ruin is out in UK cinemas on the 2nd of May. Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.