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IIt has not received as much hype as Matthew McConaughey's McConaughey, but Nicole Kidman's return to the edge of Hollywood purgatory has been one of the most refreshing returns of recent years. Remember when she starred in a comedy Adam Sandler, starring in a cheap thriller Nic Cage and well, Grace of Monaco-ing? Now, she has struggled to find herself at the top after an Oscar nomination for Lion, with a hit series on HBO, movies with Yorgos Lanthimos and Sofia Coppola, an upcoming role in a DC blockbuster.
While on paper at least, her role as a mother fighting her son's sexuality in Boy Erased is less like a deviation, her character in Karyn Kusama's dark thriller, Destroyer, looks like something we've never seen before. before. We have already done a lot of her physical transformation, as is often the case, but by playing a haunted and above all uncontrollable detective, she pushes the limits of what is expected of a female audience. It is in this exploration, the presuppositions of genre, that the film is fresh and necessary. It's in the details of the plot, though, that if it feels a little moldy, the black dive in the underworld of LA is never deep enough.
Kidman plays Erin Bell, whom we meet first as she awakens, once again, in her car, wincing at the unbearable brightness of the Los Angeles landscape. She makes her way to the scene of a murder, which has meaning for her, a sign that a former enemy is back in operation. Years before, Erin went undercover with her partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) to infiltrate a gang of criminals, led by the malicious Silas (Toby Kebbell). Thanks to a flashback, we begin to understand why her reappearance is very important to her and how ready she is to go and finally put an end to it all.
Kidman in Destroyer has a double physiognomy, which often makes us forget what we're watching, but it's a little too exaggerated for him to work in the surrounding movie. The makeup is way too macabre, reminiscent of Johnny Depp's extravagant take on Whitey Bulger in Black Mass, the surreal sensation of watching someone walking around with a Halloween costume while everyone forgot to get dressed . Rather than helping him disappear into the role, it distracts us and reminds us that it is an actor who does something rather than a person who lives his life. It is undeniably fascinating to see a woman play the kind of sour and greyish detective that we usually see a man take and there is no clumsy attempt to soften it, keep it as well hard and boring as his male peers.
Beyond that, there is not much else here that we have never seen before. It's a disappointing step backward for Kusama, whose stunning 2015 thriller thriller, The Invitation, has brought depth and humanity to the pitfalls of the genre, a skill she has unfortunately not brought to her after. The initial flashbacks tend to be something much bigger than what was finally revealed, especially in a particularly intense game of Russian roulette, but Erin's big enemy is not at all great. Kebbell, who seems to be wearing Gerard Butler in the cosplay of Dracula 2000, tries to inject a certain threat but we see so little that he has a hard time making a good impression. Tatiana Maslany has also experienced a sinister turning point, but it is a one-woman show.
Kidman does not worry about the filth of everything, whether it's fighting drunk against his daughter's shady boyfriend or wanking with a bedridden informant, but his radical transformation and his time-cunning trick can not hide a rather empty plot. It is a mechanical black disguised as something more substantial and it is felt especially in an end drowning in an undeserved depth. Destroyer will not derail the Kidmanaissance but she deserves more than that.
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