Destroyer

[SPOILER ALERT: This review contains spoilers.]

The performance given by Nicole Kidman and other actors are great but the movie doesn't have much story to tell specially for a 2 hours long crime/drama movie and it could be shorter. there are some scenes that seems a little not necessary for the plot. The story and the way it has been told is so realistic which is the best feature of the movie. the aspect of time and the reason that viewer is clueless of the past is the only magnet for them to stay and figure out the rest of the movie which is i personally think is so slow.

Jumping around from past to present was a bit confusing as I had no idea who any of the characters were as their older selves. It was still a compelling movie as Nicole plays a seemingly alcoholic, take no prisoners, police detective trying to look out for her kid that is a trouble magnet. I'm shocked she didn't just kill everyone. A lot of things seem more like happenstance rather than detective work.

Un film à la Heat par son ambiance désabusée et une Nicole Kidman très impressionnante en flic non moins désabusée dont la culpabilité et les regrets se lisent sur son visage... car en tant qu'agente infiltrée (oui, oui, une "agente" pour l'inclusivité et la parité obligatoires...) dans un gang de braqueurs très dangereux, elle a sensiblement merdé... C'est ce que l'on devine ou ce que l'on parvient à comprendre -tout de même- au fil d'un récit très laborieux, car les évènements se sont déroulés 17 ans auparavant... Le film abuse donc de nombreux retours en arrière et fait régulièrement la navette entre le passé et le présent de façon si fugace et maladroite qu'on y entrave pas grand-chose. Sauf à la fin... tout de même ! Le comble est que le film s'étire en longueurs interminables sans faire progresser le schmilblick significativement ; il se laisse aller par contre au psychodrame inutile entre notre flic (hum... flickette pour le féminin peut-être ?) et sa fille de 16 ans qui fait n'imp' (normal, c'est une ado...). Par la grâce du maquillage (ou d'effets spéciaux ?) on alterne ici la Kidman jeune et la Kidman... moins jeune un peu poivrote sur les bords qui campe ce personnage au bout du rouleau mais d'une volonté toujours implacable. Nicole reste en tout cas stupéfiante de brio et demeure sans conteste l'intérêt principal de ce film qui ressemblerait presque à Heat s'il n'était pas aussi mal foutu et bordélique.

Unless you enjoy being spat at, verbally abused and treated like a second rate viewer this could be a good movie to stay away from. TV director Karyn Kusama, her writer hubby Phil Hay, along with his co-writer Matt Manfredi look like being names to consider adding to a must avoid list. With a sludge fund of impossible to like characters - who continue to become more detestable as the minutes tick by (and there is 2 long Hrs worth that goes very slowly). You will be forgiven if you walk (no, run) out on this grot-fest of undesirable situations and characters (my audience was gone within the first 25mins). I, being a glutton for punishment had to stay to see just how much worse it could get --struggled to the bitter end-- did it get better? Sadly not. It’s another of those simple stories that have been given an unnecessary flash-back flash-forward edit job - in an attempt to make you think it's deep and meaningful, it isn’t. It seems Nichole Kidman may be heading down the road to self ruin by taking any script that’s thrown at her - leaving any followers left to think twice, before any longer bothering to follow her career. It’s as if she mistakenly feels, as these cheap writers do, that you have to keep going lower down the moral scale to be noticed. Well, from the look of the lowering audience attendances this just ain’t necessarily so! The artsy pretensions did not help whatsoever, just made it look all the more contrived. Waste of an otherwise interesting music score and just about everything else. For the easily pleased.