Hi everyone!
We’re back with another Fantastic Fest review from Andrew Campbell. I’m stoked for his review, as I share his love of Kusama’s work on “The Invitation” (2015), and I also loved her work on “Aeon Flux” (2005), despite its story flaws. For a few other recent Fantastic Fest reviews from Andrew, check out his reviews for “The Guilty” (Episode #453), “Climax” (Episode #459), and last week’s review for “The Quake” (Episode #466). You can check out all his reviews by searching the Fantastic Fest blog tag at onemoviepunch.com. I’ll put a link in the show notes.
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Take it away, Andrew!
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Hello film fans!
Andrew here, back this week with a modern noir film from a director with an interesting career arc. Karyn Kusama made her directorial debut almost 20 years ago with “Girlfight”, the story of a young female boxer, notable for being the acting debut of Michelle Rodriguez. The film went on to win the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance, but Kusama has only made a handful of films over the last two decades. 2005’s “Aeon Flux” based on the MTV cartoon was a critical bomb that struggled to recoup its large budget at the box office. After Diablo Cody penned “Juno”, Cody’s next screenplay for “Jennifer’s Body” was directed by Kusama in 2009. Starring then it-girl Megan Fox, it recouped its low budget as such horror films often do, and has become a mini cult favorite in the years since. In 2015, Kusama directed “The Invitation” and won me over with one of my favorite horror/thrillers of the last ten years. It’s streaming on Netflix now and gets my highest recommendation. When I saw that her newest film was debuting at Fantastic Fest, I was pretty stoked.
Today’s film is “Destroyer”, written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, and directed by Karyn Kusama. “Destroyer” made its Texas premiere at the 2018 Fantastic Fest starring Nicole Kidman as Erin Bell, a grizzled, aging detective who was once a young, undercover officer. The film opens with a struggling, intoxicated Bell showing up at a murder scene in an L.A. spillway (think of the bike scene from “Terminator 2”). The on-scene officers clearly don’t want her help, but she walks away telling them that she knows who killed the guy. Having recognized the deceased as a career criminal from her undercover days, the film unfolds, with Bell facing her past through visits to old associates and current informants, with flashbacks spliced in throughout.
The elephant in this room is the casting of Nicole Kidman as a sharp-tongued, world-weary detective. It’s perhaps her darkest role since playing Suzanne Stone in Gus Van Sant’s blackly comic crime tale “To Die For” nearly a quarter century ago. She’s a versatile actress to be sure with a career full of memorable performances. The Golden Globes adore her with 14 career nominations, and her four Oscar noms led to one win for “The Hours” in 2003. And here, just like with her portrayal of Virginia Wolfe in “The Hours”, she has undergone a striking visual transformation. The results are mixed. In the flashbacks she is convincing, portraying an untested undercover cop, who is in turn playing a young woman mixed up with some career criminals. The present-day version of her character systematically leans on a half-dozen of these unsavory types, as she hunts down information on the recently resurfaced man who has turned up dead. When she’s interrogating crooks, I just didn’t buy into the physicality of these scenes, nor the manner in which she delivered the dialogue, which I found took me out of the film.
The other big challenge with this film is the shifting timelines as several stories with multiple characters begin to pile up. Young Kidman is clearly heading for problems as the crew she runs with begins plotting a bank robbery. Older Kidman can barely keep herself together as she tears through the LA underworld, a story which might be taking place over just one long day or maybe it’s several weeks; it’s just not clear. We also see Kidman dealing with her teenage daughter and her far older boyfriend as she, too, starts racking up poor decisions – Kidman’s absentee parenting and alcohol abuse issues are no doubt a factor. With all the shifting, it’s hard to grab onto any one story and really dig in. It felt like work trying to wring enjoyment out of each dark scene, but I remained optimistic that Kusama could bring it all together and make it worthwhile.
What makes “Destroyer” fantastic?
Well, if you can slog your way through ninety gritty minutes of hard-boiled detective work that is occasionally repetitive and often slow-paced, the film does stick the landing. The movie ends with a decent twist that functions as a mini-revelation and serves to re-contextualize the story that just played out (and I promise this isn’t a spoiler.) The payoff made this film worth watching despite some dull moments – and if you end up digging the main story more than I did, you’ll have high marks for this one.
“Destroyer” (2018) is a challenging but engrossing L.A. story, that harkens back to television and film police procedurals of the 70’s and 80’s. Fans of street-level stories featuring cops of questionable morals, such “Serpico” or “Training Day”, will enjoy this film.
Rotten Tomatoes: 74% (CERTIFIED FRESH)
Metacritic: 62
One Movie Punch: 7.2/10
“Destroyer” is rated R and available for streaming on Hulu.
Come back next week when I’ll be reviewing “Border”, a new film out of Sweden that is a work of fantasy, set in modern-day reality. It sits at a robust 96% on Rotten Tomatoes and just hit Hulu last week. Come back next Friday and I’ll tell you if this one is worth adding to your watchlist. I’ll see you then.
