May 2010: The Killer Inside Me

Director: Michael Winterbottom
Writer: John Curran
Cast: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Elias Koteas, Kate Hudson, Bill Pullman, Ned Beatty, Simon Baker

Running time: 148 mins

Lou Ford is a deputy sheriff in a small Texas town, where the local community's view of him is one of a sweet decent endearing guy - but he's actually a psychopathic headcase who likes to violently beat up women. In addition, he commits the occasional murder. The book from which this version has been adapted has been done previously in 1977, with Stacy Keach in the role of Lou. This outing has a leading man who couldn't be more different - it's a long trip from Stacy Keach to Casey Affleck.

Director Michael Winterbottom collaborated with screenwriter John Curran to bring Jim Thompson's novel to life, and here I feel they've ill advisedly chosen the wrong source material. Thompson's novel is classic noir, hard-boiled, twisted and filled with reversals. In a book this works, but in a film it can lend a sense of meandering lethargy, and the entire second section of this film version of The Killer Inside Me ends up feeling bloated and aimless.

Casey Affleck is however excellent as Ford and he makes the role his own, bringing a suitable thickness and charm to Lou's public moments. In fact Affleck's babyfaced looks render Lou seemingly harmless in a whole different way, and in that it works very well. Affleck retains a sense of calm throughout. The main story of The Killer Inside Me follows Lou trying to cover up a double murder with even more murders, and every time he turns around the noose gets tighter and tighter.

The film has courted controversy since it was screened at the Sundance festival, because of the extreme violence, in particular during a scene where Lou Ford beats his prostitute mistress Joyce, played by Jessica Alba, to death. The scene is utterly brutal and virtually unwatchable in sections, however there's another scene later that I feel is even more horrendous, because of the emotional context. Both are exceptionally tough sequences, but they work in the way they are intended to: totally exposing Ford as a completely abusive, horrible, murdering monster. The main problem may be that the film comes to the first violent scene too early, and it shows Lou and Joyce begin their S&M-heavy affair before anything further is fully established. There is no set-up of Lou as a person, or his public persona, something a novel can do quickly through prose but which can take a lot longer in a film.

In terms of S&M, as in the novel, The Killer Inside Me enters a world where all women seem to wish to be savagely beaten in bed. This, more than the Alba beating, seems deliberately poised to create an uproar. The clear vein of misogyny running throughout the narrative - including flashbacks establishing that Lou's problems began with an incestuous and S&M-based relationship with his mother when he was still a child. As The Killer Inside Me is a first person tale (Affleck does some narration), the misogyny, as does the violence, stems from the sociopathic character of Lou Ford. He is unquestionably a very, very bad guy, but that's the point. He kills men quickly and cleanly, but the point appears to be that Lou is taking out his maternal issues on all the women in his life.

Unfortunately the misogyny and violence is really all that this film has going for it. Winterbottom's faithfulness to the source may have hamstrung the whole film. The book's twists and turns don't exactly translate properly on to the screen and in the closing third section where Lou is institutionalised then oddly released following a visit from a bizarre, seriously underwritten character played by Bill Pullman is an immense stumbling block. In the novel this may have worked, in the film version it is only a very strange padding. The narration also trips up seriously in that it continues over and into the ultimate demise of the narrator, pedantic perhaps - but a device which deems the process as preposterous. In summary, a fine performance from the leading players, but the page-to-screen translation fails badly and as result we have what may seem to some cinemagoers unfamiliar with the book, a highly offensive, gratuitously violent, waste of time.

Argentinean director Pablo Trapero's 'Lion's Den' is a respectful, women-in-prison film that exceeds the value inherent in its unique premise. Set within a maternity ward in a maximum security prison, the setting ensures that the film manages a substantial degree of sociological interest and it lends itself to some intrinsic drama and political commentary. Trapero's interests lie in examining the microcosmic society that exists in this cell block and turning his attractive young protagonist's stay there into a physical and moral endurance test.

Indeed, for a prison film, there's surprisingly little overt excitement here. Time and again, Trapero eschews the predictabilities of that genre, always opting for introspection and diffusion over dramatic force. The key scene might well be the prison riot, in which the camera seems less interested in the mindlessly raging prisoners than in heroine's meeting with the warden, who argues for emotional control in the face of chaos, in the process demonstrating constant control from the director, resulting in a unique, low-key outlook, even in the face of the story's most extreme situations.

Similarly, Lion's Den locates a unique form of melodrama, since its heroine's struggles don't really seem centred in an unjust legal system, a corrupt prison, or the man who accuses her of her crime. Instead, most of the tension here arises out of a crisis of conscience. The viewer is never clear on whether or not the lead character will acknowledge or remember the events that led to her incarceration. It's a decidedly interior approach to a seemingly sensationalistic story, bolstered by a solid, but guarded, central performance from Martina Gusman that gives the audience little to embrace. Trapero discourages the audience from easy identification, turning attention to the bigger picture, stressing observation over condemnation. Throughout, his direction is impressive, with constantly assured camera movements, and terrific use of his extras in his long shots, but very few histrionics. The result is a film that confounds expectations, keeping its audience at an arm's length, even as it courts interest through its gripping plotting.