OK, stop me if you’ve heard this before. An ex-con has moved on in life, working an honest job, having a good friend he can always count on, living with a loving wife. And then, one day, his past catches up to him, and takes away everything he holds dear. So, he is forced to use his long buried instincts to track down those who wronged him in a quest for revenge.
Yeah, there’s been plenty of these kinds of movies, with the quality of them ranging from terrible to transcendent. And that is more or less the setup we’re dealing with in the new indie revenge drama, Into The Ashes, which is from writer/director, Aaron Harvey.
The ex-con in question here is Nick (Luke Grimes), who is living a happy life with his wife, Tara (Marguerite Moreau) in a small Alabama town. But unbeknownst to him, a former associate of his, Sloan (Frank Grillo), has just been released from prison, and he has a score that he wants to settle. He and his men are seeking out Nick, and they reach his home while he is out hunting with a friend, Sal (James Badge Dale). When he gets home, he finds his wife murdered, and he gets shot. Fate turns out to have other plans in mind, so he survives two gun shot wounds, and escapes the custody of his father-in-law/town sheriff, Frank (Robert Taylor), to avenge the death of his wife.
Describing it as such paints a standard picture of what you’d expect from a revenge drama, but the film is quick to make a firm stance that it’s trying to be a bit different. From the very beginning, there’s an ominous feeling, like a feeling of inevitability. It drones along for a solid amount of time building up to the actual catalyst of the story – the murder of the wife, which happens a whopping 40 minutes into the 98 minute movie. It takes its time with the character, even if it doesn’t necessarily indulge with exposition. We never really know the specifics about Nick’s relationship with these men out to get him, but we know just enough.
If anything, the film is stylistically more akin to something like No Country For Old Men, as a recent example, but Harvey has listed some 70s and 80s genre films like Rolling Thunder, Charlie Varrick, and The Hit as influences, which is certainly woven in the DNA of this film’s more contemplative impulses. It’s not a film that revels in the visceral thrills of seeking revenge. In fact, most of the violence in the film occurs off-screen, leaving us only the gruesome and pitiful aftermath that violence leaves behind. Even when it gets to the moment where most audiences will want to cheer on Nick’s revenge, Harvey pulls out the rug from under you in a way I won’t spoil, but I found strangely thrilling in its audacity.
The film is handsomely put together, not super stylish, but it compliments the mood that the film is setting. John W. Rutland’s cinematography is full of static shots and slow pushes and pans, and it works alongside the soft but propulsive score from James Curd really effectively. That cast is uniformly excellent. Grimes is a rock solid lead, whose soft spoken tendencies is a compelling contrast to the sinister qualities that Grillo brings with ease. Dale has always been a reliable character actor with these kind of blue collar roles, and this is no different, and the same goes to Taylor, who manages to bring some gravitas to some of the lines, which might not have seen anywhere near as deep on paper, but sounds profound when he says it.
I really enjoyed Into The Ashes. It doesn’t necessarily push the formula in ways I haven’t already seen before, so it might not appeal to most mainstream tastes, but genre aficionados will certainly find a lot to like here. It’s unsettling, dour, and bleak, but it has a lot on its mind. I’m not sure if the overall thesis about the nature of evil and man comes together quite as cohesively as Aaron Harvey intends, but I really admire its ambitions nonetheless. It’s incredibly watchable, it effortlessly hooks you in, and it keeps a consistent level of intensity for the whole ride, even at its most subdued. Combine that with a roster of thoroughly capable performers, and you got a refreshing and mature alternative to a lot of the stuff you’ll find in theaters this summer.