Adapted from a 1952 novel by Jim Thompson, we get to know small-town Texas lawman Lou Ford (baby-faced Casey Affleck) who serial-kills and struggles to cover up the evidence of his crimes, narrating all the while. An audience member at Sundance called the film “just horrible” right to director Michael Winterbottom’s face, in response to the brutal imagery, especially towards the two female leads, Kate Hudson and Jessica Alba. Though jolting in the mid-’50s, murder narratives are a subgenre as popular as Coca-Cola these days, so what shocks here is the time spent on the details of the violence, especially hard to take in a story with no moral centre or perspective. While finding it ugly is understandable, the film’s just too damn well-made to dismiss out of hand.
This article appears in Oct 28 – Nov 2, 2010.