Hey, paper covers razor!
Vengeance (2022) explores the fluid morality of today’s America, and finds that even that fluidity, that morality-of-convenience, cannot cloak the monster of morbid injustice, the creature Narcissism, strides the field and destroys what it touches.
Of course, it involves young people, story-teller and feeder of the contemporary maw of the podcasts Ben, and Abilene, eponymous daughter of the Texas town, whose fate it is to end up suddenly, chaotically dead. But unlike so many victims, Abilene has a family that knows she is gone, and now hungers to know the why. Ben, as the boyfriend, is called on to investigate.
And so the tale wanders from casual sex to opportunism to the importance of relationships, and then up the lonely road of human expendability, and the joy that one person takes in it. Indeed, its poetry entrances him, as it were.
This thing kept our attention as it fused modern and ancient sensibilities into one smoldering mash of morality, of anger, and of … vengeance. Well acted and well done, I’d say. But while it can be characterized as a whodunit, it’s really more of a whydunit.
