On the couch

The Killer Inside Me is tough going. A quality, old-fashioned flick with compelling performances across the board no doubt, but also a decidedly disturbing experience.

Set in the ’50s and starring Casey Affleck – whose recent string of impressive performances has seen him shed his “the other Affleck brother” tag – it’s the story a small town sheriff who, despite his mild-mannered demeanour, is mad. Bad mad, not the funny “I’ve got a silly hat isn’t it silly?” kind.
Deputy Lou Ford gets caught up in a blackmail deal with the town’s richest man, his dopey son and a local prostitute (Jessica Alba). So far, so film noir you say? Well, just when you think the film is going down the standard road of shady deal and double crossing, things take a sharp turn onto flinch-inducing brutality street and don’t look back.
Not to say that the film descends into 90 minutes of ghastly violence, it doesn’t. The few scenes of violence that do feature, however, are painful to watch, remorseless in their brutality and almost exclusively directed at the women in the film.
The horror of the crazy deputy’s actions are portrayed matter-of-factly by director, Michael Winterbottom – whose last film, Nine Songs was an example of a different kind of matter-of-fact filmmmaking – and the moral vacuum that Affleck plays him with is mesmerising to watch.
Again, however, it must be stressed that the violence shown in The Killer Inside Me is far less apparent, or important than that which is implied. The film itself is a superbly crafted noir without it, featuring an excellent supporting cast including Alba, Kate Hudson as Ford’s long-suffering girlfriend and Elias Koteas as a shifty union organiser who knows a little bit too much about the deputy’s dark-dealings.
Like the sex scenes in the Wachowski brothers’ pre-Matrix movie, Bound, or the ear-cutting in Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the controversy surrounding a small part of The Killer Inside Me detracts from the film as a whole.
Slow-moving and absorbing, this won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, but for those who like their killers creepy and their stories tangled, this is a worthwhile watch.
While it might lack some of the truly inspired sleeze that made Abel Ferrera’s Bad Lieutenant, which starred Harvel Keitel, and was dubbed the fifth best film of the 90s by Martin Scorsese no less, Bad Lieutenant Port of Call: New Orleans will surprise you.
Kick Ass! notwithstanding, Nic Cage’s involvement with a film has become shorthand for a film sucking harder than an industrial vacuum with the power dial set to 11 so the first surprise is that not only is Port of Call: New Orleans quite good, Cage is also pretty bloody good in it.
While the story is more than reminiscent of the 1992 film of similar name – good cop, bad man sinks deeper and deeper down the drug/debt/dodgy deed hole until any shred of what could be considered common decent has disappeared like a candy floss whisp in a whirlwind – renowned director and sane person, Werner Herzog, claims never to have heard of or seen the original.
Now I don’t want to call Mr Herzog a liar but… I don’t know how to finish that sentence.
Anyway, Cage plays Lieutenant Terrence McDonagh, a good cop (bad man) in New Orleans who, after injuring his back while saving a man during the floods that followed Hurricane Katrina, becomes addicted to painkillers and, from there, other harder drugs.
He tries to keep both his drug addled life and mounting gambling debts in check while leading an investigation into the brutal killing of a small-time dealer and his family.
The occasional singing iguana, a breakdancing corpse or two and the frequent appearance of the, now patented, Cage “mad eyes”, it’s fair to say he only does a good job for most of the film.
It’s not a patch on Abel Ferrara’s take on the copper undergoing a breakdown material but it’s an entertaining exercise nontheless and allows for some guilty but oh so enjoyable laughs as McDonagh wheels from one drug to the next and one crazy incident to another.
A worthwhile distraction for one of the many wet evenings sure to be on the way.