Review: Destroyer
"I don't care what happens to me," LAPD detective Erin Bell says at one point in Destroyer and, indeed, she looks and sounds long past caring. Nicole Kidman, her face ravaged and hollowed out and her slight body suggesting numbness, resignation and the weight of a thousand burdens, portrays her as someone who knows that she's long past saving and that life has become her own private hell.
The discovery of a dead body provides some clues to what made Erin a wreck of a human. Noting a dye-stained $100 bill and the tattoo on the back of the victim's neck, she gleans that an old foe by the name of Silas (Toby Kebbell) has resurfaced. Her connection to him turns out to be more complicated than what it first appears, especially when she receives a dye-stained $100 bill and is shown to have vestiges of the same tattoo on the back of her neck. Flashbacks reveal a more vibrant Erin as she and former partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) went deep undercover to infiltrate Silas' gang as they prepared to pull off another bank robbery. Lines soon become blurred, sometimes for the better (Erin and Chris' staged romance soon becomes the real thing), but mostly for the worse as the couple find themselves swallowed up by the morass of Silas' corruptive influence.
It's no surprise that Erin wants to track down Silas, but she is very much a woman alone in her mission as she has burned every bridge possible. It's riveting to observe the lengths Erin will go through to get her man, whether it's jerking off a dying ex-con in exchange for information, or disrupting a bank robbery in order to kidnap Petra (Tatiana Maslany), Silas' girlfriend and partner in crime. The latter is an excitingly staged sequence, one that displays Karyn Kusama's skill for pacing, grit, and composition and one which spiritually connects Destroyer with the likes of Michael Mann's Heat and William Friedkin's To Live and Die in L.A., L.A. noirs that similarly explored the intrinsic rottenness in the city of angels.
In many respects, Destroyer is a fairly standard crime thriller and its central character the kind of tough, morally complicated figure that's part and parcel of the genre. Yet what differentiates it - the fact that its director and, most significantly, its protagonist are both female - also weakens it to a certain extent. This is more germane to the narrative, which also tracks Erin's attempt to reach out to her estranged 16-year-old daughter (Jade Pettyjohn), who has taken up with an older low-life. The sections with her daughter make sense, but they dilute the greater narrative of Erin navigating the toxicity that surrounds her at every turn.
Kidman is nothing less than brilliant, once again reminding viewers why she has been and continues to be one of the most fearless performers of her time.
Destroyer
Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Written by: Phil Hay, Matt Manfredi
Starring: Nicole Kidman, Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, Tatiana Maslany, Bradley Whitford, Jade Pettyjohn, Scoot McNairy, Toby Huss
