THE KILLER INSIDE ME

Central City, Texas. Real estate agent Chester Conway asks Deputy Sheriff Lou Ford to make Joyce, a prostitute who has a relationship with his son Elmer, leave the city. Initially, Lou decides to carry out the task, but then he establishes a perverse relationship with Joyce that awakens Lou's sadistic instincts. At the moment when the deputy sheriff will decide to frame both Conway and Joyce, he will trigger a spiral of violence with unpredictable consequences. “The Killer Inside Me” has been talked about due to the alleged gratuitous violence even before being presented in advance at this year's Sundance Film Festival. In competition at the Berlin Festival, it has attracted the ire of much “sensitive” criticism and now the controversial film by Michael Winterbottom (“Wonderland”; “The Road to Guantanamo”) also arrives in Italian theaters. The classic scandal film built ad hoc to make people talk about it, you will say, and yet we have the gem that needs to be seen regardless of the fame it carries behind it. Also because the advertised violence is there, it is realistic and brutal, but certainly does not leave traumatized those who are minimally accustomed to a cinema that is not exclusively the one signed by Disney. There is a beating inflicted on Jessica Alba that certainly does not leave one indifferent (guiltily censored in the Italian cinematic edition!), abundant sadomasochistic sex, rather explicit references to sexual violence on minors and a fundamental amorality that makes the difference…in short, Winterbottom crafts a certainly hard and raw film that does not leave one indifferent for the violence brought to the screen, but certainly the reasons why it is worth taking a look at “The Killer Inside Me” do not end here. Winterbottom draws his film from a famous novel by Jim Thompson, “Il killer che è in me” (1952), which had already been adapted for the screen in 1976 with the eponymous film starring Stacy Keach. “The Killer Inside Me” 2010 version immerses itself in a sleepy Texas town in the 1950s with a pulp story that starts with a slap given to the wrong person and ends in pure madness. The character of Lou Ford, played with coldness by a suitable Casey Affleck (“Gone Bay Gone”), is a repressed psychopath, the deputy sheriff that no one would ever want to represent the law in their city. Lou has evil running through his veins, that evil of the soul without explanation that unsettles precisely because it is devoid of any easy explanation. Lou has a formation as a perverted psychopath from childhood, a self-taught individual who soon knows the pleasures of sadomasochism, thanks to the sexual initiation by a beautiful adolescent, and then delights in torturing and raping five-year-old girls. A cold, cynical, and self-satisfied pervert who manages to gain everyone's trust, thanks to his good boy face, his mild temperament, and his gentle manners. It takes little to unleash the psychopath caged in Lou's mind, to give free rein to his malignant nature, it takes just a slap, an aggression from a prostitute to bring forth crazy plans of blackmail and murder. Winterbottom describes with complacency the descent into hell of the community of Central City, the typical town that hides rot in every corner, but revolves around the element of social instability characterized by Lou Ford. The deputy sheriff appears as a receptacle of all the evil that lurks in Central City, the symbol of the deviance that is inevitably stuffed into every social microcosm. Lou possesses a nearly supernatural magnetism that pushes anyone to give him credibility and any woman to fall in love with him, even in the face of paradoxical moments of violence. The immotivation and the charm of evil, therefore, that the character of Casey Affleck represents perfectly. The problem that “The Killer Inside Me” falls into is a certain mechanicalness in the development of the plot, a fault to be attributed to the screenwriter John Curran (“Il velo dipinto”) who does not always handle the paradoxical complexity into which the story delves with the succession of events, leaving aside or treating with superficiality some key moments. Good, however, the writing of the characters, even minor ones (the lawyer Walker played by Bill Pulaman is an example), with the sole exception of the unionist Joe Rothman – played by an Elias Koteas eternally relegated to supporting roles – who does not appear sufficiently developed. Very good, however, the performance offered by much of the cast, led by a rising Casey Affleck and surrounded by Jessica Alba, Simon Baker (“La terra dei morti viventi”; “The Mentalist”), Ned Beatty (“Un tranquillo weekend di paura”; “Superman”) and an always excellent Kate Hudson (“The Skeleton Key”; “La mia miglior nemica”). Technically, everything works a bit, from the photography of Marcel Zyskind to the historical reconstruction up to the jazz soundtrack (notable the very colorful opening titles with “Fever” by John Little Willie). We are not dealing with a perfect film certainly, but “The Killer Inside Me” knows how to do its dirty job well: entertain, disturb and, why not, reflect. And in a mainstream film usually only the first characteristic prevails. It deserves half a vote more.