Mark Reviews Movies: DESTROYER (2018)

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 24, 2018

There is nothing special about the plot of Destroyer, a story about revenge in which a police detective sets out on a vendetta against a criminal who personally wronged her. The fact that the cop is a woman is one of the minimal elements that makes the story slightly different, although the character herself has been so devastated and has become so jaded by the events of the past that her gender is of little concern to the story. In fact, one could so easily imagine this character being played by a man that one wonders if that's how Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi's screenplay began.

With just a few changes to the details of the back story and a couple of swaps in the genders of her erstwhile romantic partners, the protagonist could become a male cop without any significant changes to the plotting, the dialogue, or the various relationships here. This isn't to suggest that the movie should have a male lead. It's simply to point out how generic the character is, regardless of gender. As such, it's probably better that Hay and Manfredi ended up with a woman as the lead, if only because the fact of the anti-hero's gender is the only thing that sets her apart from a long line of such characters within such stories.

The decision also gives us the opportunity to see Nicole Kidman further stretch her range. As Erin Bell, an idealistic undercover cop who becomes the vengeance-obsessed shell of a Los Angeles police detective, Kidman gives us a doubly transformative performance. There's the major shift in her character, obviously, from the flashbacks of her time working an undercover sting to catch a gang of bank robbers to a time in the future after that operation went to hell. That's one part of it. The other is the actress' physical transformation, in which the scenes in the present day have her looking worn out, as if her skin has been ravaged by the pain of the passing years, while her physicality suggests someone who is merely sleepwalking through the events of her life.

It's a substantial performance in a movie that doesn't live up to it. From what we can tell throughout most of the movie, this is the story of two stages of Bell's life. They play off each other in straightforward, plot-heavy ways. In the past, we learn how Bell and her undercover partner Chris (Sebastian Stan), working in collaboration with the FBI, became entrenched the gang, led by the ruthless Silas (Toby Kebbell). Early on, we learn that something went terribly wrong with the sting, which comes as little surprise, considering how haggard, angry, and reliant on substances the present-day Bell is.

The specifics of what went wrong are, naturally, doled out gradually, and by the end of the story, we have a full understanding of the mistakes, the causes, and the consequences of that mission. It's nothing that anyone with a basic grasp of such stories couldn't guess well ahead of time. Hay and Manfredi, though, keep the revelations coming, as if they're unexpected and radical things, instead of taking the time to actually explore these characters or this situation in any significant way.

In the present, Bell seemingly stumbles across a crime scene. A man has been murdered, and the tattoo on his neck is a telltale sign that killing has something to do with Silas, who disappeared after the undercover thing went poorly.

From how the screenplay frames it, the murder leads Bell to track down Silas' old criminal acquaintances, whose own lives have been ruined by the aftereffects of what went down (One of them is dying of cancer and wants Bell to give him one, last moment of pleasure, while Silas' former lover, played by Tatiana Maslany, is a poor drug addict). Her investigation, of course, is extra-legal (She keeps her detective partner, played by Shamier Anderson, out of the loop for his own good), and all the while, she has to contend with a teenage daughter (played by Jade Pettyjohn) who hates her and an ex-husband (played by Scoot McNairy) who has given up on her.

The plot within both the flashbacks and the apparently present-day story is routinely straightforward, with the past filling in the puzzle of the present and the investigation leading to a chase or two or three and at least one shootout. Director Karyn Kusama treats the assorted interludes between the plot and the action with an admirable combination of disgust and pity (for the assorted criminals and Bell herself), which is, perhaps, the only way to approach material that has little concern for these characters as anything more than pawns within a falsely elaborate puzzle.

Some will notice that I have been slightly evasive in my wording about certain sections of the plot, and that's intentional. The ultimate point of Destroyer has little to do with these characters or even the plot itself. It is, instead, entirely a matter of time. The final twist is the revelation of when certain things have happened, and if that sounds shallow and pointless, well, it is, at least, a fitting finale to this story.

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