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.

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.

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

Revenge narratives are a dime a dozen but when storytellers are able to really get to the root of why these archetypal tales are so compelling, as Saulnier is able to do here, they strike a collective nerve.