“Vengeance” baffled me with some amusement and disappointment. Languidly driven by a little investigative reporting process on the mystery surrounding one seemingly plain incident, the movie attempts to make some barbed points on the current social/cultural gaps and divides in the American society, but, ironically, it also dabbles in numerous clichés and stereotypes you can expect from its quirky story promise. The overall result sometimes swings too much between drama and satire without enough balance for that, and I am still scratching my head on how to process its interesting but rather uneven presentation of various ideas and thoughts popping here and there.

B.J. Novak, who also directed and wrote the film, plays a New York City writer named Ben Manalowitz, and the early part of the film shows how superficially self-centered this dude is. While he has been fairly successful enough to support himself, Ben wants more success and attention nonetheless, and that is why he has tried to get draw some interest from a female friend of his who is incidentally an editor working in some big podcast company. However, she is not particularly interested in whatever suggested from him because, probably, she sees through his seemingly fancy but ultimately hollow words right from the start.

On one day, Ben receives an unexpected call which confounds him a lot for a good reason. The caller is the older brother of some young Texan woman with whom Ben slept a few times some time ago, and this guy tearfully notifies to Ben that, as already shown to us at the beginning of the film, his younger sister died recently. Ben is reluctant when he is asked to attend the upcoming funeral to held at that young woman’s hometown in Texas, but he eventually agrees to go there, mainly because her older brother is so persistent in his personal request that Ben cannot possibly say no.

After managing to endure a very awkward moment when he has to say something nice about that dead young woman, Ben is introduced to her surviving family members, who look and feel as clichéd as you can possibly imagine. For example, everyone in the family surely knows how to handle firearm, and they are also inexplicably quite obsessed with a certain local fast food restaurant, which seems to be the best place in their neighborhood although it does not have anything particularly special to eat.

Naturally, Ben is your average fish-out-of-water under this situation, and the movie dryly doles out some droll moments of cultural clashes you can expect from this setup. Yes, he surely comes to have another very awkward moment as an outsider when he attends a local rodeo game at one point. Yes, he also goes to a local bar where many people joyfully dance together on the floor, and he is rather amazed by that. As a matter of fact, it looks like he has never watched such a thing like that from TV or movies, though he says that he attended the SWSX Film Festival in Austin, Texas a few years ago.

Meanwhile, Ben comes to the possibility of an interesting narrative via that dead young woman’s brother, who is somehow convinced that she was actually murdered. Although there is no hard evidence, Ben is willing to investigate the incident more for getting more materials for his future podcast show, and his editor friend actually becomes interested enough to encourage and support him.

Of course, as he delves more into the incident, Ben is reminded again and again of how things can be weird or dangerous in Texas. Not only the local police but also several other law enforcement organizations are not particularly interested in resuming the investigation, and you may be amused by the sequence where Ben keeps facing the dead end in one way or another thanks to their very uncooperative attitude. In addition, it looks like he is not so welcomed by everyone in the area, and that naturally makes his podcast materials look more interesting than before.

However, Novak’s screenplay often loses its way more than once during its final act. While it seems to make a sly fun of Ben and many other stereotype characters in the story, it only scratches the surface without giving much depth to the story and characters. Around the finale, the movie does try to attempt to be more serious as our pathetic hero going through some soul-searching, but then it takes another expected plot turn as going through another odd moment along with him, and that can be a bit too jarring to you.

Anyway, Novak, who is no stranger to comedy considering his substantial supporting turn in American TV comedy series “The Office”, is effective in his character’s frequently self-absorbed status, and several main cast members including Boyd Holbrook, J. Smith-Cameron, and Issa Rae manage to bring some life and personality to their rather thin supporting parts. In case of Ashton Kutcher, he simply steals the show as the elusive but charismatic local music producer who was once associated with that dead young woman, and he will remind you again that he is capable of giving a very good performance if he gets a chance for that.

In conclusion, “Vengeance” is not entirely satisfying despite some enjoyable elements, but it shows at least that Novak, who made a feature film debut here, is a competent filmmaker with some potential. He stumbles a bit too much, here, but he may give us something more satisfying in the next time, and I will certainly keep my mind open for that.