Buzzard (2014) User Reviews

The Deviant, Slacker Version of "Napoleon Dynamite"

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 2 March 2015]

Paranoia forces small-time scam artist Marty (Joshua Burge) to flee his hometown and hide out in a dangerous Detroit. With nothing but a pocket full of bogus checks, his Nightmare Power Glove, and a bad temper, the horror metal slacker lashes out.

The film starts off strong, great impression of the main character without even showing his face. We then transition to a clever, devious and hilarious bank scene. Which gets better as it goes... heck, the film could stop after the first five minutes and it would be a winner.

There is no doubt the creator of this film loves horror. There are references to horror classics like "Nightmare on Elm Street", "Return of the Living Dead", "Wicker Man", "Demons" and "Suspiria". Heck, there is even a full-sized poster for "Leviathan", which is a rare find.

In summary, the film is one great scene after another. Treadmill Bugles? Brilliant. The spaghetti incident? Brilliant. Scamming a McDonalds? Brilliant.

Some critic smarter than me says the film is "notable for reigniting the angry young man niche, both in aesthetic and voice." Now, whether or not that is true is beyond me. Seems it is hard to reignite anything by itself... would it not have to create a trend? But it does have a man fighting against his own futility -- a futility he largely creates. And there is a message in there somewhere.

Weird...in a good way, but too long at times

[MarcoLara · 7/10 · 27 February 2016]

This is not a bad movie if you like this sort of movies.

And what sort of movie this is? Well, think the original "office" series (the British version, not the American one) and you will be in the ballpark. But make no mistake because this movies is not a comedy...at least, not all of it.

The majority of the movie leans towards a comedy, but then you start realizing that the message on this movie is that there are actually guys like the main character, which may make you feel a bit umconfortable.

In fact, I am willing to bet that most of us know someone like him, or may have been him a while ago. It is a phase that we all have. A phase where life is a bit like a game, and it is hard to discern between fantasy and real world, between good and evil, between what is legal and what is not.

But while we are all supposed to end that phase as we enter adulthood, some people stay there permanently. That is hardly an spoiler as the main character makes that fact clear from the get go...

...then again this movie has a couple of tricks down its sleeve that you will not want to miss.

My complain about the movie is that some scenes are far too long, and while it works in some cases (one of them its really hilarious) in others you just wish the movie to be over already. Cutting this scenes to the necessary length, and perhaps expanding a bit more the end, would have a much better effect in my humble opinion.

Still its a movie worth watching if you are into "the office".

Entertaining, but disappointing

[wildblueyonder · 6/10 · 20 September 2020]

I did enjoy the movie but I did leave it feeling irritated. I'm not sure the point of building up to all that drama just to end the movie like that - its pretty lousy.

What you have is a completely socially ambivalent human who has and seeks no purpose and the movie seems to go to great lengths to make us, the audience, root for the kid but then he starts to devolve into ... well what?

I'm not one to feel that a film needs to wrap everything up in a nice bow for you but in this case I left with questions that nullify a lot of my enjoyment of the movie. Obviously the kid has issues but he kills a guy - is it full blown mental illness or is he just self-involved to the Nth degree?

And what is the deal with a 3.5 minute scene of a guy eating spaghetti? Is he that bored? Is he going mad?

I just felt the movie could have capatilized better on all the tension it built and instead it just sorta ended, I thought it was a shame.

Definitely interesting

[Red_Identity · 5 November 2014]

This is the sort of film that kind of immediately grabs you from its opening scene, for no apparent reason really. It's not visually stunning or doing anything outrageous, it just has a very clear tone and seems to know what it's doing. The ride throughout is interesting, even if it has some parts that don't entirely work. The directing is smooth and has an off-kilter vibe that many would be proud of. I think this sort of film has the capacity to establish a real fanbase, and I wouldn't be surprised if it did. Overall, the running time also needed to be a little shorter, for such a limited story, but I recommend this uneasy, weird film.

Uncomfortable social comedy

[Armin_Nikkhah_Shirazi · 6/10 · 5 July 2023]

BUZZARD follows Marty, a small-time criminal who tries to carry out various scams whenever he gets a chance. Shortly after he extends his activities to cashing other people's checks from the bank for which he works, he realizes that he is about to be caught. So he first goes into hiding in his nerdy work friend's basement, and then, as his paranoia about getting caught increases, travels to Detroit.

This movie was well-received by critics. The top critic comment, giving this a perfect score, called it a "scathing indictment of capitalism". Except, it isn't.

There certainly is social commentary here on how the capitalist system can turn people into drones dependent on the next meager paycheck, reduced to trading frivolous escapist entertainment for a higher sense of purpose, and even discharged of their empathy for less fortunate fellow human beings.

And I can see why a movie critic would think that Marty's story is an indictment of capitalism: although he is a crook, he has at times a child-like naivete which is hard to believe, and which sets him up for many of this troubles. If we squint really hard, we could argue that the capitalist system exploits this naivete to take advantage of him.

But the problem is that, as the character is drawn, his compromised ethics is not the result of being exploited by the capitalist system, but simply of him being a person with low ethical standards.

Sure, there are scenes where he speaks to his mother and lies not for personal advantage but to make sure she does not worry about him, and on one call he even makes a point to request that she tell his siblings that he loves them. These scenes certainly humanize him, and nobody questions that he is capable of love, but it does not change that, as drawn in this movie, his character would still be a criminal in a more just society, one that did not try to take advantage of him at every turn. And that is what undermines the movie as an indictment of capitalism.

It is instructive to compare BUZZARD to EMILY THE CRIMINAL (2022), a thematically very similar movie which is both better entertainment and a real "scathing indictment of capitalism": Emily's ethical standards are also lower than those of most people, but she hangs on to a fundamental sense of fairness that Marty simply lacks.

Only when this sense of fairness is violated by the Kafkaesque obstacles erected in her way by the capitalist system does she resort to crime. It really makes a huge difference in how we contextualize her situation compared to his. And I think that is exactly how it should be, because there has to be a point at which blaming the system becomes merely an abdication of personal responsibility.

The various ways by which Marty carries out his many small scams are amusing, as are various sequences of silly games he and his friend invent and play. His portrayal as a small-time crook seems naturalistic to me and may be interesting as character study. But Marty's lack of a fundamental sense of fairness made it hard for me to relate to him, and it negatively affected my enjoyment of the movie.

There is a tonal shift toward the dark when the movie goes into the third act and Marty goes to Detroit, but it didn't feel that pronounced to me because the purportedly more lighthearted earlier acts already felt uncomfortable.

The movie ends on a note of irony and takes a small surrealist turn, but I could not do much with that. This is not the kind of comedy I would normally watch for entertainment.

Surprised by the reviews and score

[TheBeardedWonder · 2/10 · 3 August 2019]

People must be seeing something I'm not because this was barely even a movie. Any group of people with a camera could have made this. Scenes go on and on and on with nothing happening.

I like artsy flicks, and slice of life flicks are great sometimes. This fails at everything it tries and wasn't funny in the least. I literally didn't laugh the entire runtime.

Rage on!

[zoozersadd · 10/10 · 17 March 2014]

I loved everything about this film. An angry young mortgage worker starts to get into trouble with his scams and basically goes off on the world. Shot in MI (I think) with the bad side of Detroit on display. Lots of metal music and horror homages. Super cool through and through. Very funny characters, but not too wacky or intentional. They seem like real guys from my high school (even though they're probably in their late 20s.) Its funny sometimes, and dark and weird a lot of other times. A great blend that doesn't really fit into any genre. I was lucky enough to catch it at SXSW in my hometown, and cant wait to show my friends once it comes back to town. No romance no gushy crap!

Interminable Boredom

[vantikaci · 1/10 · 9 July 2017]

This is a movie by a middle class white boy for middle class white boys. It's a superficial and juvenile depiction of what a comfortable office worker imagines "deprivation" to feel like. And the ending? Carol conveniently getting fired in the last few seconds, problem solved everyone can go home now? Ugh.

Jarring stuff

[Camoo · 8/10 · 18 June 2015]

Buzzard is a good little movie, and by little I mean it looks like it was shot on an iPhone for a budget of 500$. That's not at all a bad thing. Movies like this lean on good writing, memorable acting and characters in lieu of high end production value, and grab-as-you-go energy in place of finesse.

Marty Jackitansky is a hell of a memorable character; gangly, dour, my wife went so far as to call him 'grotesque' which I think is pretty accurate. I've never seen a character like him before, and I hope I never do again. Joshua Burge gives a disquieting, subtly hilarious performance that pulls the whole tone of the film into his gravity, warping the other comic elements into something darker.

Creative and Uncomfortable

[timothygartin · 5/10 · 4 May 2020]

"No one will be seated during the thrilling, five-minute long spaghetti eating sequence."

The tone of this movie changes from funny, goofy characters in silly situations, to a really uncomfortable third act where our lead character descends into paranoia and violence. It is really hard to continue watching this movie once the setting changes to Detroit. The tone change does not work for me.

That said, the first two acts are great. They have clever scams and funny scenes. The acting is wonderful throughout.

He's a bad boy well played.

[JohnDeSando · 12 March 2015]

"I may live badly, but at least I don't have to *work* to do it." Hitchhiker from Richard Linklater's Slacker.

The slacker, Marty (Joshua Burg), in his titular reference, Buzzard, is more socially disaffected than Napoleon Dynamite and scarier in a covert sense than Freddie Krueger. In all, this comedy drama is a witty allegory about teen anomie and an indictment of a society that constructs barriers through bureaucratic indifference.

Marty is a small time scam artist, mostly stealing checks from his temp work at a bank to trading in discarded McDonald's sandwiches from the garbage for fresh ones. All the while this metal meat head has a poster of Freddie and a glove with knives for digits. You guessed it: If director Joel Potrykus places the glove in a shot early on, chances are we'll see it later on in a far less sedentary shot.

Yet meanwhile, Marty is pulling little cons with motel room access and check kiting and generally avoiding the law. He is alternately lovable in his counterculture way and menacing when faced with authority he doesn't respect. Through most of the film, Marty is an amusing though disreputable slacker, a temp worker ripping off the bank he works for and a buddy only temporarily engaged while he thinks of his next low-level crime.

"Buzzard" should get the year's prize for the most accurate title in film. Marty feeds off the carrion of society while he literally does so in his McDonald's larcenies. Until the climax, he evades the authorities, who must by now be up to his game. Without focusing on his criminal activities, an inference could be drawn that society needs to be vigilant and proactive to help these Napoleons have meaningful lives. Otherwise, Freddie has spawned a most lethal buzzard.

One word: Boring

[verbalfonders · 1/10 · 3 May 2022]

I saw another reviewer compare this to Napoleon Dynamite and I will say they are similar in the way that they both don't really go anywhere or they're not really about anything. This movie was boring and the protagonist was unlikable and largely unrelatable. I can see his struggles but his unwillingness to own up to anything and only lash out at society is such a played out trope at this point and his goals were seemingly meaningless. As always, watch the film and make up your own mind, but I won't be viewing this again.

Whatever you think of this, it's an original depiction of modern alienation.

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 12 June 2016]

Independent cinema didn't always make for a comfy home for big stars to do something "dramatic" even if it's only Oscar fluff or if it's some kind of micro-budget genre piece of whatever. When independent cinema fires on all cylinders, not all the time but often this is the case, you see a filmmaker without much (or any) interference and showing a vision of the world, a point of view, that is unique to them. We may be able to tap into it, or it may be difficult, but the vitality is the key thing (hell, even Gummo is something I have to acknowledge as a one-of-a-kind thing). Buzzard is like that; if it were out in the 90's it probably would have received a decent release in theaters (maybe 100 or more, at best, hopefully) and then found a home on video. Today it might have one or two theaters and go straight to Netflix. Which, if you catch the right 'Netflix and chill' couple on the right moment may not be a bad thing. Maybe. Maybe not.

Buzzard is as weird and off-putting as any indie I've seen in recent memory and a lot of it comes down to how the filmmaker Joel Portykus shows us this misfit Marty Jackitansky (sound a little like Rockitansky, the real name of Mad Max, just a thought, whatever). He's perhaps more than misfit: take a little of Travis Bickle, a little of Beavis & Butt-head (mostly the metal and horror movie obsessions but also the disaffection) and a lot of modern day slackerdom and you get Marty as a guy who lives on his own, has posters for Elm Street movies all over the place (even in his kitchen, nice production design touches!) and fashions his own Freddy Kruger knife-glove out of a Nintendo Power-Glove (which itself is a reference to Elm Street 6 - gotta love this director's indirect homage, but I digress).

He works at a temp job but barely and tries to do any little scams he can - that is as someone who is fairly unambitious in his thievery (i.e. ordering office products on the company dime that he can sell back at another store with a guy who's cool) - and then gets into some possible hot water over some checks. Again, not for any large amount, but it's the principle of the thing: the guy just hates, well, most things it seems, and spend a chunk of this narrative on a (halfway) work buddy's couch (the director Potrykus is this maladroit nerd).

It's a downward spiral kind of movie, and it's not an easy one to sit through. Matter of fact I think most people would find more to sympathize with in Bickle (at least he was a veteran in a sleazy city right?) and Marty is all about... well, who needs ambitions when you got the Freddy Kruger Power Glove and a Nintendo game system to play after all? And as the story goes on and he gets into further (albeit petty) criminal acts, it gets harder to feel empathy with him - one of the 'set pieces' involves an almost experimental-film level moment where he sits in a bathrobe in a nice Detroit hotel eating a plate of spaghetti leaning back in bed - but perhaps that's the idea.

Sometimes art is about challenging our notions how people live and what we might do in their situation. Marty doesn't have much in the way of morals, he does what he does so he can get by. Don't many Americans living in the paycheck-to-paycheck scenarios? I think that what the film may lack in outright comedy - sometimes I found myself laughing, usually over the childish griping between Marty and Derek in the latter's basement, mostly in the movie I was silent - it has oodles of in fascinating behavior. You feel uneasy about this, and it lacks an original score outside of the very occasional diegetic music. I found myself hooked into this man's journey towards destruction and all of his own self-imposed beats to keep himself into a pattern (this includes a couple of awkward phone calls to his mother, it's in these moments I felt the depth in Burge's mostly interior except when angry performance).

The very ending (like the last shot) is a little too perplexing for its own good (except to say, I guess, that doom will never leave him or something, it's too vague to make its point substantive), and not all of the non-professional acting is solid. Otherwise, Buzzard is an excellent, oddly ambitious and discomfittingly weird example of how to tell a story of very human self-destruction all with a guy who does every little trick he can to get by... until he can't. But hey, that's why he's got that glove!

I just kept waiting for something to happen

[rpaleschi-05963 · 1/10 · 28 March 2020]

YAWN! My God this was a hugely boring movie. No real build up and certainly no pay off. If, like me, you find yourself watching it hoping that the end might somehow make it worthwhile... DON'T BOTHER, IT'S GARBAGE!

My second favorite movie @ SXSW 2014.

[lindsaymichelleyoung · 10/10 · 29 July 2014]

There is nothing about this movie I would change given the chance, and that's why I give it 10/10. I'm not sure when this movie is supposed to take place & love that it didn't matter. Marty is the gutsiest slacker on earth, taking advantage of the system everywhere he goes. The camera spends a lot of time in view of his face, which makes it all that much more apparent how withdrawn and composed he is in his scams, and effective when we notice him displaying fear & rage & doubt as things begin to close in on him. One of my favorite parts of this movie was Marty's selfish, awkward & mismatched relationship with his coworker and friend(?). Napoleon Dynamite-ish humor there. A scene where they snack of Bugles brought me to tears. Yay for junk food & horror culture. Yay for this movie. Release it to DVD already so I can show all my friends.

Slacker Power

[truemythmedia · 9/10 · 14 June 2019]

There hasn't been a slacker this compelling since Ignatius J Reilly. It's the most punk rock movie I've seen since Penelope Spheeris's "The Decline of Western Civilization Part III". Rock on Portykus!

Marty Jackitansky is Me

[Khan-Woman · 9/10 · 8 September 2019]

It's rare that you see yourself in a character as clearly as I saw myself in Marty Jackitansky, and that's not a good thing.

Buzzard is about a guy who is content with a life of just barely getting by if it means putting in the bare minimum amount of effort. This is like Napoleon Dynamite set in Austin and staring a bunch of weirdos. It's like Catcher in the Rye but staring a man instead of a kid. A great character study.

Pure story telling and it's fantastic to see.

[Sicknology · 10/10 · 17 March 2017]

You get just enough of a peek into the characters to want more and more and you could spin-off anyone of their appealing lives in a full feature film. I'd love to see a Derek spin-off personally as it would make for a fantastic flick. You could have that guy just walk from one end of a street to the other and enjoy what happens.

Marty Jackitansky goes rogue, but does it in such a human manner that you feel emotions for the guy you didn't think possible. I wanted to hate him, but in a single scene you're left feeling sorry for Marty, then almost allied with his misguided cause. I didn't want the story to end, but seeing how it plays out into a violent crescendo was just beautiful.

It's screams indie with pure perfection and while some films of the same style let you down in the final third, Buzzard just keeps surprising with all the right turns.

I can't give it any less than a 10, as it was my film of 2014 and one of the best of its kind in any given year.

A more real, fun and original version of Joker

[godinho-1 · 10/10 · 12 January 2020]

Buzzard is like a punk rock band that refused to sign a contract with a big company and didn't care about Joaquin Phoenix at all. Fans of the Todd Phillips film should watch it. And it came 5 years before the blockbuster.