Destroyer
Undercover blues…
Out 25 January
Nicole Kidman seems to be enjoying a purple patch. From blockbusters (Aquaman) to arthouse entries (The Killing Of A Sacred Deer), she’s evolved into an ever-game character actor. On peak off-piste form, Kidman dives deep into Karyn Kusama’s LA crime movie, making magnetic work of a B-flavoured noir with lofty pretensions.
Despite their flaws, Kusama’s Girlfight (2000) and Jennifer’s Body (2009) showed an innate understanding of their female leads. For her fifth film, the director establishes an intimate engagement with her star’s transformed face right away, letting Kidman’s sunken eyes tell a tale of guilt, trauma and spiritual exhaustion that seems laboured elsewhere in the script.
Kidman plays cop Erin Bell, her voice hoarse from booze and suffering as she investigates the return of old criminal nemesis Silas (Toby Kebbell). Her decline is plotted across two awkwardly ambitious timeframes, in which we see Erin undercover, giving crooks hand-jobs for info, taking beatings, and failing to salvage ties to her daughter
(Jade Pettyjohn), as her squalid surroundings begin to tug at her like quicksand.
Kusama cooks up a choking air of corruption, thickened further by the omnipresent shadow of Theodore Shapiro’s dour score. Against this over-determined backdrop, the foregone conclusion might have hit harder had 20 minutes of stuffing been punched out of the script. Critically, Kusama forgets the first rule of B-style noirs: hit ’em hard, hit ’em fast. But at least time with Kidman’s ragged cop is time well spent. Kevin Harley
tHe VerDIct
This densely over-plotted noir gains firepower from Kidman’s full-bore immersion.