Saturday 25 May 2019

Destroyer

Cast: Nicole Kidman, Toby Kebbell, and Sebastian Stan

Director: Karyn Kusama

121 minutes (15) 2018
Lions Gate Blu-ray region B
[Released 27th May]

Rating: 8/10
Review by Steven Hampton

After a rough night, homicide detective Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman, Aquaman) ‘drags anchor’ to daily work... Ominous music. Telling details of a moral decay. Pointed questions earn blunt responses. She’s back on the case of gangster Silas (Toby Kebbell, Fantastic Four), while giving a hand-job to an informant. In-between drunken mopping alone in bars, there are several flashbacks to Erin’s undercover work as a sheriff’s young deputy, alongside FBI agent Chris (Sebastian Stan, Avengers: Infinity War). A reluctant daughter, under-age Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn), gets her wild-child on, while Erin is failing again at responsible parenting, and simply ignoring urgent police calls from her present-day partner. 


An exhausting night chase uphill results in further clues for the walking punch-bag of a heroine who’s finally and truly had enough of questions while dealing unsuccessfully with low-life types living in wealthy privilege. Surveillance, off-duty, on gangster’s moll Petra (the violent hysteria brand of Tatiana Maslany, Orphan Black), leads Erin into confronting a bank robbery that ends in the frenzy of a gunfight. Having kidnapped the bloodied Petra to save her from police arrest, Erin digs herself into deeper holes of failure, on both sides of the law, skimming from loot, and trying to buy back personal trust for her broken relationships.


With a tremendously bold performance by Kidman, this is a stunning crime thriller about a crooked cop struggling to make right all of her most terrible mistakes, with a desperate vigilante action as the only viable solution to overwhelming problems. As director Karyn Kusama (maker of Aeon Flux, Jennifer’s Body) here seems firmly intent upon presenting us with authentically classic movie styling, instead of the far slicker production values of other, similarly female-led, pictures such as Atomic Blonde (2017). 


Unearthing a buried, but unforgotten past, Destroyer embraces its fatalistic odyssey of a character study with a supremely gritty assurance, to prove that some degree of existential repentance might be possible, even when forgiveness of any sort is nowhere to be found. 


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