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This adaptation of Thompson's 1952 novel about a cunning, psychotic sheriff's deputy in a small Texas town locates the killer inside him and immerses us in the cold calculation and horrible logic that pull him from one murder to the next.
Little, however, can save The Killer Inside Me from its worst impulses, its reveling in brute violence that makes it hard to watch and nearly impossible to admire, even though it's carefully crafted.
As for the misogynist brutality, it is indeed depraved, made more so by the fact that its female victims are depicted as loving their abuse right up until it turns murderous.
The question of Winterbottom's intent here isn't easily answered, but the power of his abuse scenes is undeniable.
It's a psychologically haunting portrait of an extreme personality, an amoral, violent, lonely man.
The Film Critic Inside Me ...
An excellent film which takes some big, brave steps in the crime genre...
Jim Thompson's 1952 novel upon which this is based was supposedly unfilmable: perhaps that was the correct assessment.
full review at Movies for the Masses
Casey Affleck delivers a chilling performance as a sociopathic deputy sheriff whose charming veneer shatters as we're introduced to his taste for violence of both the straight-up and sexual kinds.
[Affleck's] commitment to such a vile character, even in spite of Winterbottom's occasionally questionable direction, displays a fearlessness that is rarely seen in cinema today.
The violence is not shown in an ironic fashion. It's put front and center and is visceral in a way nothing else is in the film.
A beautiful, fitfully successful film with another compelling Casey Affleck performance.
No movie for old men, or any other demographic for that matter.
Dark thriller centers on brutal violence against women.
It's a credit to the British director that he's captured so much regional and class detail, but disappointing that his film's conclusions are almost banal, with a contrived finale that ties too many threads together.
It's Winterbottom's first entry into dark noir, and I think a more seasoned hand in the genre would have given Lou's horrible actions their proper moral weight.
Viewers are invited to spend these torpid minutes burrowing into Lou's back story in search of reasons why he is off his rocker. But this is one movie psycho that defies all amateur psychoanalysis.
Winterbottom's film is really rather down beat and hard to take. Perhaps that's only just so. Lou's heart of darkness takes us to a dead end. It's the kind of violent movie where you just want all the bloody mayhem to stop.
It's a violent film about violence, but that makes it truthful.
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