The Killer Inside Me

There has been a star-studded history to the attempts to adapt Jim Thompson's 1952 pulp crime novel, The Killer Inside Me. Big names such as Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor to Tom Cruise, Drew Barrymore and Leonardo DiCaprio have been attached to it. Quentin Tarantino had it for a while, hoping Brad Pitt, Uma Thurman, and Juliette Lewis would star. A film was made in 1976, starring Stacy Keach, but is unseen by me (and by many others, it seems).

Now we have Michael Winterbottom's film of the book, starring Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, and Kate Hudson, and the problems that no doubt plagued the creative minds in the past are self evident here. The film looks great, wonderfully suggesting the sleepy, dusty world of a small west Texas town of the 1950s. But The Killer Inside Me is a tale narrated by a psychopath. What works on the page--a glimpse into the mind of a killer--on film seems like a so-what exercise.

Affleck is Lou Ford, a deputy sheriff in Central City, Texas. He seems completely normal, and is sent on an errand by his boss to tell a prostitute (Alba) to get out of town. She responds by slapping his face, and this seems to be flip an on-switch in him. He tans her bare bottom with a belt, and they end up in a clinch (this film is nirvana for spanking enthusiasts). The affair goes on hot and heavy, despite Affleck's relationship with his girlfriend, Hudson, and Alba's relationship with the son of the town's richest man.

Affleck learns that a beloved step-brother's death may not have been an accident, and in order to get revenge on the man he believes responsible, that same rich man (Ned Beatty), he cooks up a plan to kill Beatty's son by making it look like the son and Alba killed each other in a lover's quarrel. Affleck first must kill Alba, and he does so in a shocking matter--pummeling her in the face. At first he gets away with it, but an inquisitive district attorney (Simon Baker) is suspicious of him, and Affleck needs to kill more people to keep his secret.

The film has other flaws. It's heavy in exposition in the beginning, but even so there are numerous confusing moments. I was puzzled about some flashbacks to Affleck's childhood and a woman who may have been his mother laying the foundation for his love of hitting women. Not helping is the sound mix, which has the dialogue recorded way too low, or Affleck's mush-mouth Texas accent, which frequently required subtitles. It is almost calls for a second viewing just to get everything straight.

But how many will want to watch this film twice, let alone once? It is extremely unpleasant--the violence has already caused controversy. The assault on Alba is one of the most brutal I've seen in a long while, and it is not the only scene in the film that takes a long, clear-eyed view of a woman being savagely beaten. I'm sure misogyny was not intended, but this is not the movie to take a girl out on a date. It is to Alba and Hudson's credit that they did this movie, as so often a movie with either of them signifies automatic crap, but I am curious as to Alba's decision-making process. Did she read the script, realize that almost all of her part required her to be punched in the face or roll around in a state of semi-undress with Affleck and say to herself, "I must do this part!"

When it was over I had to wonder what the point was. Affleck, as movie psychopaths go, is not all that particularly interesting. I suspect the book is a much more gripping experience.