"The Killer Inside Me": Film Noir in the Texas Sun, 50's Style.
I've been a film noir fan since, oh, perhaps the first time I saw Robert Mitchum in Cape Fear or Dan Duryea in Criss Cross. It never occurred to me that a truly disturbingly dark "film noir" could be made in the bright Texas sunshine of the the candy-colored 1950s. Filmmaker Michael Winterbottom has taken Jim Thompson's creepy pulp classic and turned it into an masterpiece of modern film noir (and I'm not saying that just to be nice to the guy who directed 24 Hour Party People)
When making this type of film, a lot or the plot hinges on the psychopath. How long can he keep his false face on? Who will he reveal it to--the victims or the lawmen? How long will it take for this to happen? The portrayal has to be believable--any small crack in the facade and an astute cinephine will notice. Casey Affleck has stone-cold killer Lou Ford down, well, cold. Affleck has the slight build, and boyish look makes him an unassuming as a psychopath--but there's a coldness in his eyes and a hollowness in his warm Texas drawl (which never wavers) that made me find him unnervingly attractive while the hair on the back of my neck stood up. His narration, which is mostly about keeping up appearances and the social order in the Texas oil town where Ford is a deputy sherriff.
Then there's the look on his face when Jessica Alba's Joyce Lakeland smacks him......
See what I mean?
While Alba didn't seem like she fit the 1950's all that well, Kate Hudson becomes that schoolteacher who will do anything to get Ford--a "good catch" by 1950's standards-- to marry her. Hudson obviously gained a few pounds for the role, rounding her figure out enough to wear the corseted creations that made women miserably uncomfortable and princess-like at the same time (seriously: who could go to work in a longline bra and crinoline and actually be able to move and breathe. Trust me. I've worn both.)
We don't get enough backstory to know much about the relationship between Ford and Union boss Joe Rothman (Elias Koteas) and Simon Baker's FBI agent Howard Hendricks is never actually introduced. Ned Beatty turns another great character performance as the Texas oil baron Chester Conway, whose name the town now bears (much to Ford's chagrin.) So it is surprisng that Lou seems to show respect to the guy who could be called a "commie" and exacts a certain kind of vengeance against the guy to whom he feigns respect.
No matter how good or mediocre the rest of the cast, the film belongs tol Casey Affleck (outdoing anything his brother Ben has ever done.) He is shocking, yet enough is revealed that we understand (perhaps) what has made him such a creep :[spoilers ahead] from catching his brother in the midst of molesting a 5 year old, to a very sexual, incestuous mom, to the sadomasochistic pictures of a woman he finds in his so-respectable deceased Daddy's bible.[end spoilers.] Yet how can we be sure that Lou's recollections are real? The only things that are real are the pictures--and, of course, Lou's own twisted crimes....
Playing a psychopath is probably one of the hardest things for a normal, well-adjusted actor to do. Certainly someone who really is a psychopath couldn't play a psychopath--because when someone has that kind of condition, what they do appears to them to be normal. So is the world of Lou Ford--to Lou Ford. And Casey Affleck is one hell of an actor.....
Review of Note: Peter Bradshaw raises some excellent points in his reveiw in The Guardian UK. While he gets the violence-against-women almost right, he doesn't quite get the violence against others, esp. males, who are seen as less than. Beyond a doubt there's a whole lot of violence in this film, but it's doled out with contempt for just about everyone, not just women. Still he makes a great point about how the movie doesn't glamorize violence. Here I totally agree. The violence, to whomever it is doled out to, is awful, and could make even the most hardend film critic flinch just a bit.
