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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