Mark Twain's quote, "Never let the truth get in the way of a good story," comes to mind watching "Vengeance," B.J. Novak's terrific feature directorial debut about a New York writer who inexplicably gets involved in a murder investigation in West Texas.
Ben Manalowitz (Novak) is a know-it-all Brooklyn hipster who overuses the phrase "100 percent." One morning, he is awakened by a phone call from a stranger, Ty Shaw (Boyd Holbrook), who tells him "the worst news he will ever hear": Your girlfriend — Ty's sister Abilene (Lio Tipson) — is dead. However, Ben is in bed with another girl at the time, and Abilene, was just one of Ben's many hookups. Of course, Ty, in his grief, is not going to want to hear that, so Ben reluctantly goes to the funeral — where he is even asked to speak! — for a young dead girl he barely knew.
