The Killer Inside Me (2010)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on June 25, 2010 @ tonymacklin.net.

When a screenplay of a movie does not serve its literary source well, it's a major problem.

When a movie is directed tentatively, it's a major problem. When a movie is miscast, it's a major problem.

The Killer Inside Me -- which has been released to theaters and at the same time is on tv on video-on-demand -- has all three problems.

The movie adaptation of the cult classic novel (1952) by Jim Thompson sorely lacks the quality, depth, and vitality of the book. Screenwriter John Curran, director Michael Winterbottom, and actor Casey Affleck all are earnest, but earnestness doesn't cut it. Ill-conceived earnestness is still ill-conceived.

The Killer Inside Me is the story of deputy Lou Ford (Affleck) in the 1950s in Central City, a town in West Texas. Ford has a pleasant, innocuous surface, underneath which hides a murderous killer. He brutalizes women and commits a series of shocking killings. His monstrous actions lead him down a bloody, fatalistic path of destruction. It's a probing character study of a psychopath.

The book is compelling; the movie fails to match it. Most of all, the movie lacks clarity. Much of Ford's "sickness" comes from the past and his childhood, but in the movie this is vague.

One of the crucial, major characters is blurred in the movie. What happened to Helene? In the book, she's Lou's father's housekeeper, who has mysterious, sadomasochistic sex with Lou, which has a lasting effect on him.

In the book as an adult Lou finds one provocative nude photo of Helene; the movie has several. The more the murkier.

In the movie she's not identified in the credits. Maybe she didn't want her pubes identified.

Very few reviewers refer to the character in the movie -- one thought she might be Lou's mother. Clarity?

In Lou's sexual encounters in the movie, Winterbottom has him clasp his hand over his partner's face -- to make her more like the woman in his youth. But who was she?

Winterbottom and his screenwriter cut or changed other relevant qualities. They cut out Lou's manic laughter that is a major characteristic of the protagonist in the book, and they add a spitting -- I assume for shock's sake. If Thompson wanted Lou to spit, Michael, he would have him do so.

Thompson's prose has an energy and verve the movie lacks. It also has a little lyricism that is absent from the movie -- "A butterfly struck against the windscreen and flew away again." Cinematographer Marcel Zyskind pays an undeserved nod to Edward Hopper, but the tone of Thompson's prose eludes him.

Winterbottom turns some scenes that were credible in the book into contrivance in his movie. The sequence of the bum's running down the street in the movie becomes nearly preposterous.

Casey Affleck is miscast as Lou Ford. Affleck is a fine actor, but he has trouble carrying a film. He is more observer than protagonist. Affleck was ideal playing Robert Ford (another Ford) to Brad Pitt's Jesse James in a performance for which he received a nomination as Best Supporting Actor. Affleck could play Nick Carraway to Pitt's Gatsby.

Maybe Ford should have made a Pitt stop.

In Gone Baby Gone (2007), in which he played private detective Patrick Kenzie, much of the action happens around Casey. And in the Danny Ocean series, Casey is a cog. But as the center of a movie, Affleck lacks dimension.

The rest of the cast in The Killer Inside Me is able, especially Tom Bower as the broken sheriff. Jessica Alba and Kate Hudson offer up their faces and bodies for abuse.

But Affleck lacks sufficient substance. His character supposedly is a sexual magnet for women, but Casey Affleck is no sex machine. Hardly.

He is as bland as Mighty Mouse. When Lou punches women, which is a lot, his punches seem like ka-pows, not possessing deadly impact. His victims are pulp, but we are not pulverized.

Some females walked out of the screening at Sundance because of the movie's "misogynism," but the impacts are more surprising than shocking. Maybe that's why they included the arbitrary spitting.

I probably wouldn't want to see the movie of Jim Thompson's novel as it should be made.

But the critic inside me realizes the present movie is only a pale facsimile.

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