VENGEANCE

Director: B.J. Novak
Starring: B.J. Novak, Boyd Holbrook, Ashton Kutcher, Dove Cameron, J. Smith-Cameron

Audiences may know B.J. Novak best from his days on The Office. Now he’s making his feature film debut as a writer and director with Vengeance. Novak also leads the film as Ben, a writer for the New Yorker who now wants to be a podcaster hoping to tell a great story that connects with people. It feels like he’s going through a bit of an existential crisis with his thoughts about the state of America, relationships, and everything in between as he tells John Mayer at an event. Yes, that John Mayer, who only appears in this one scene. One night he gets a strange call saying that his girlfriend, Abilene, has been killed and needs to come down to Texas for the funeral. They only hooked up a few times, but her family believes they were dating. He heads down south where her brother, Ty (Holbrook), tells Ben he thinks she was murdered and now wants to avenge her death. Ben’s leery as it seems to be an overdose but sees this conflict of reality as the perfect story to tell on a podcast. His producer, who’s played by Issa Rae, gives him the green light taking him on a winding road to where the truth lies.

Here’s my review