Recent Release Reviewed: The Killer Inside Me

Starring: Casey Affleck, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Tom Bower, Elias Koteas

Screenplay: John Curran and Michael Winterbottom, based on the novel by Jim Thompson

Director: Michael Winterbottom

"I love you."

In a small town in Texas in 1952, deputy Sheriff Lou Ford (Affleck) is told to convince prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Alba) to leave. Instead, he begins a violent affair with her, hiding the truth from his girlfriend Amy Stanton (Hudson). But a con involving the son of local tycoon Chester Conway (Ned Beatty) will soon reveal Ford's true nature.

N.B. This is my review. I thought I'd be much more impressed by this film. As it is, all that stuck with me when I left the cinema was the shock of the violent scenes. The rest of the film seemed almost incidental. Ben will write his review of the film when he's seen it, and he may well disagree with me entirely!

All the controversy surrounding Winterbottom's adaptation of Thompson's cult novel put me in mind of another film accused of misogyny: Lars von Trier's Antichrist. But while Antichrist see

med to revel in it's genre trappings, Winterbottom takes great pains to keep focus on the characters rather than the desert landscape or the 50s small town setting. Which begs the question, why set it there at all? I'll talk more about that later, but aside from a virtuoso opening title sequence, there's little other than the cars and the smoking to place The Killer Inside Me in the 1950s. The fact that Lou's a cop is only important in that he gains people's trust. As a waitress points out, he doesn't even carry a gun.

The three central performances are superb. Affleck's turn as Lou Ford, the every-man with the pitch dark soul, has drawn a lot of comparisons to his work as Robert Ford. However, while Robert was ultimately a somewhat tragic figure. Lou is a monster. While it might have been expected to cast an actor with a somewhat more cheerful demeanour to make the transition more chilling, Affleck's focus, and that horrifying little grin when he lets himself go, makes the central character chillingly magnetic. There's also the fact that Lou doesn't have a transition. People call him a nice guy, but we see very little evidence of that.

Alba shows a vital sadness and heart to the role of Joyce, the prostitute who is convinced that Lou is going to run away with her. The same goes for Hudson in the part of Amy, who initially seems to have more smarts and backbone but makes the exact same mistakes. Both actresses are normally to be seen in more family-friendly, upbeat fare, and both excel here. It's their old-fashioned movie-star good looks, personality and soulful eyes that make it so hard to watch when things take a horrible turn.

In terms of story, Winterbottom keeps focus solely on Lou. We see the world through his eyes, and hear his subdued world view through voice-over. For the first 20-30 minutes, this is gripping. After that, it settles into a disappointing sort of monotony. Because of this, there is a lot going on with the plot that we don't know about, and any supporting characters are pretty much incidental. This does mean that we have no one to root for. The two men closest to figuring out the truth are DA Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker), who needles and works Lou but can't quite catch him on a lie, and union man Joe Rothman (Elias Koteas), who's only concerned that the he and the union can't be seen to be to blame. Of the two, Howard is marginally more heroic, but neither seem to be especially likeable.

Winterbottom's aim seems to be to take a period which we tend to view with rose-tinted glasses and place scenes of horrible violence into it. But while it's well-shot and superbly acted (Beatty is excellent, as are Tom Bower as Lou's kindly boss, Brent Briscoe as a drunk drifter, and Bill Pullman in a fun cameo), there's nothing terribly compelling about the film other than its shock value. Once one of the women is horrifically dispatched, the rest of the film deals with Lou laconically covering his tracks, and waiting for that temper to reappear. The scenes of violence against women are unflinching in their honesty and are difficult to watch. Accusations of misogyny are misplaced, but frankly there's not much here that Joe Wright and Keira Knightley's PSA didn't cover.

I disagree with some of the flak the film has received, but not all of it. See it for Affleck, Alba and Hudson, and a couple of excellent scenes. However, there are a couple of tough-to-forgive missteps and it's surprisingly light on dramatic tension.

6.5/10