Dir:

Jeremy Saulnier

With: Macon Blair, Devin Ratray, Amy Hargreaves

Runtime: 90 minutes

SOME might consider this a fallow period in the cinema year. The Oscars have bloomed and gone, the gaudy charms of the blockbuster season are a while away, and little seems to be happening. Yet for those who fancy something more than the common or garden fare often to be found in the multiplex, spring officially springs this week.

Any one of three titles reviewed on this page could have been the film of the week. Between them, the American revenge drama Blue Ruin, A Thousand Times Good Night, the tale of a female war photographer torn between job and family, and Ilo Ilo, a sideways look at recessionary times, sum up what is best about indie and global cinema in that they are strong stories told in new, captivating ways.

Blue Ruin edges a win as film of the week because it had the hardest job to do in providing a fresh take on a tired genre. From Ben-Hur to Braveheart, revenge is the dish cinema likes to serve hot or cold, for breakfast, lunch or a post-pub snack.

It seems a simple enough job: give a hero a reason to hate and watch him, or her (Uma Thurman in Kill Bill), react. But because the task is so straightforward it takes a certain something to make a picture stand out.

Blue Ruin, a prize winner at Cannes last year, is the second feature from cinematographer turned director Jeremy Saulnier after the zero budget comedy- horror of Murder Party. Whatever the writer-director has been doing in the seven years since Murder Party, it was time well spent. Perhaps he was practising the ancient and little used art of subtlety, because that is what he deploys to such impressive effect in Blue Ruin.

For some time, we are not sure what ails Dwight (Macon Blair) but something, or someone, has turned him into a drifter, living out of his car and scrabbling in bins for food. When a police car parks beside his abode it seems he is going to be arrested for some minor misdemeanour or other, but from the solicitous way he is treated it is clear that Dwight is more victim than criminal.

Told that an unnamed "he" is going to be released from jail, the officer once again expresses her sympathy for what was done to "them". Unspeakable acts have taken place, and Dwight's ruined life is the result.

Dwight takes the news in the subdued way of the long grief-stricken. Buying a map for Virginia, where the original crime took place, he takes to the road.

It does not take long before he is revealed as a pretty useless sort of cold blooded assassin, more Mr Bean than Charles Bronson. Still, he proves himself efficient enough to unleash a wave of counter-revenge.

Instead of waiting the length of the movie for revenge to be done, the hunter becomes the hunted early on. Not for the first time, Saulnier throws expectations in the air.

Besides being a poor man's assassin, Dwight is not given much to speeches either. "I'm not used to talking this much," he says to his sister.

Their heart to heart, taking place in a diner, is interrupted by a man in the next booth asking to borrow the ketchup. It is tragedy being played out in small dollops, wonderfully realistic, and utterly believable.

At another point, just when a character in a more heavy-handed movie might clear the room of furniture and prepare to go for the big Oscar moment, Dwight says softly, "I don't have a speech".

Blair hits every note just right in playing what is a complex character. A small man in every sense, Dwight does not have the capacity to turn the other cheek, but it is hard to take against him, despite his actions. Between them, Blair and Saulnier add layer upon layer to the character in such a way that we start to root for him.

If you can judge an hombre by his friends, the introduction of Devin Ratray into proceedings as Dwight's old high school pal shows the little man cannot be all that bad. In what is a short but near picture-stealing performance, Ratray's ex-Army, backwoods character opts to help out Dwight, all for the sake of more innocent times now long gone.

Violence is only to be expected in a revenge drama (in the movies, no-one ever hits back with a snippy email).

What comes as a surprise here is the humour Saulnier and his cast manage to wring from such a grim set-up. Desperate times call for the bleakest of humour, and this movie has it.

Again, it is a risky move but one that works. Far from destroying careers, Blue Ruin is a movie that makes them.

Cineworlds, including Glasgow Renfrew Street and Edinburgh, from tomorrow, plus Glasgow Film Theatre, and Cameo, Edinburgh. Filmhouse, Edinburgh, May 15-18