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.
