Anyone with even the vaguest interest in films is aware of the hoopla surrounding British director Michael Winterbottom’s (24 Hour Party People) first American film and the levels of violence it depicts. Unfortunately the discussions around The Killer Inside Me means that as a viewer you can never watch it without some prior knowledge and the influence of the strong opinions surrounding its content (consider not reading on if you have managed to avoid hearing anything thus far).
Based on a 1952 pulp novel by Jim Thompson (who also wrote The Grifters), the film follows Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a sociopathic, small-town deputy sheriff, viewing the action from his perspective. With a loving girlfriend, Amy (Kate Hudson) and a seemingly contented life, Ford’s hidden nature comes to the fore when he is asked to run Joyce (Jessica Alba), a prostitute, out of town. When a blackmail scheme and the chance for revenge coincide, Lou’s psychotic behaviour is unleased on his unsuspecting friends and colleagues.
The thing that most film commentators have taken from The Killer Inside Me is its violence, which is graphically displayed and brutal to watch. There has been so much talk about this that you’re on tenterhooks watching the film. Ultimately anticipation robs the film of some of its power, dulling its confronting and shocking nature.
Winterbottom has defended his film against detractors, saying that violence on screen, especially realistically depicted, should disturb viewers. And he makes a good point, violence in films is rarely accompanied by any sense of its truly horrifying consequences. Perhaps more worrying to Winterbottom is the number of people who accuse the film of being misogynistic.
With a highly stylized noir aesthetic and impressive performances from the whole cast, including an excellent turn from Affleck, this is a good film, but really nothing more. It isn’t the profound look at human nature, or the unique take on the genre you might have expected from a director of Winterbottom’s calibre; but then again it isn’t the gratuitously violence, exploitation film that has been suggested either.
3/5
First published in The Brag 23/08/10
