I did see this, Julia wanted to watch this one and so we watched it together. So, having been a movie fan for so many years what often happens when I watch a newer film is I am reminded of an older film. In this case, when I watched Vengeance, I was reminded of Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye, a picture I love. Which is about several things and features a hero who, seems out of place in the times he is living in. The world has passed this man by and he spends a good deal of time trying to comprehend what it going on around him. 

Like Vengeance, the story is set in motion by the death of a woman and then the central character goes about solving who killed her while interacting with a bunch of oddball individuals. The Long Goodbye is a favorite of mine and I really love the film. 

I will say I identify more with the characters in The Long Goodbye. Elliot Gould plays Philip Marlowe, mumbling and talking to himself, and totally at sea in 1970s LA. It's a great performance. Also Sterling Hayden is in this as Roger Wade and man, it is one of the great Sterling Hayden performances. 

Vengeance seems to take the plot and outline of The Long Goodbye and transfers it to the present day. The lead is a journalist that seems to write about nothing, rather than a private detective that seems to mostly be doing nothing when he gets pulled into a murder mystery. Watching Vengeance, it seemed to me that B.J. Novak was drawing heavily on The Long Goodbye in a bunch of ways. Which in the end, I really enjoyed. 

When Vengeance starts off though, with Novak and his buddy in a bar, I first thought "Who are these assholes and can I sit through this whole thing with clowns like this as the characters?"

It gets better though and really the asshole he plays at the beginning has to go through a transformation to end up where he does at the end...and really, that is what some people call great fiction. That your character at the end is not the guy he was at the beginning and that is quite true of Vengeance. 

Ashton Kutcher was, quite honestly, a revelation to me in this picture. I never thought much of him as an actor but here he is awesome. And I agree, Novak wrote him a great speech to deliver toward the end. 

I do highly recommend the film, Julia loved it, and I also recommend checking out the picture I suspect Novak sort of used as his inspiration, The Long Goodbye from 1973.