5# - Movie Review

The term character study is often applied to films that focus on the inner workings of the central character and have a plot that is more or less the vehicle to explore them. The term is so often used when describing films like this that many people have come to think that character study is a genre onto itself, however this is not the case. Genres are used to put films into simple and understandable categories like comedy or thriller, they tell you the general feeling that is intended. Character studies on the other hand could be a drama like Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver or they could be a comedy like Scorsese's The King of Comedy. Those films are both character studies of two men Travis Bickle and Rupert Pupkin, both are played by Robert De Niro, neither are funny, although both are still great. The character study goes beyond the boundaries of genre because they are attempting to deal with the motivations, thoughts, and feelings of their protagonists.

Dealing with the inner workings of the lead character is exactly what the film Destroyer directed by Karyn Kusama is successful in doing. The film follows the life of LAPD detective Erin Bell played by Nicole Kidman, a woman scarred by years of hate and regret over the events that happened fifteen years ago. When she as a young officer and a FBI agent played by Sebastian Stan went undercover to infiltrate and arrest a gang of bank robbers led by the manipulative Silas. Erin's time undercover did not go according to plan and the events of that time led to her estranged relationship from her family and her disregard for everything especially herself. Nicole Kidman's performance was one of the film's biggest marketing strategies saying that you could see Kidman as you have never seen her before. I was initially drawn in by that myself out of curiosity just to see if she could become this character and she does it so well that it makes me hate the fact that the marketing team is selling the movie on her appearance and not on her performance. That being said it did make me make want to come see Kusama's film, so Kidman being there probably helped the movie get made. 

As a director Kusama intentionally for this film tried to show parts of Los Angeles that are not often shown in films like a church in a Hispanic area that has legal services for illegal immigrants in the back or the outskirts of the city where there is one building with nothing else around it. Kusama lingers on the violence, sickness, and misery that world has brought to these characters. This backs up how existential the film is, no higher power watches over the world the film presents. Silas the head of the gang even says that you can be whatever you want cause there is no one watching and Erin herself knows this and says that people are not held accountable. The only person that can hold anyone to account for the things that have done is themselves and the rest of society. The existential feeling that inhabits the world creates a blurred morality and that is helped by the flashbacks from the past to the present. A haze covers the film it dosent want you to know what actually happened and the characters do not want to find out for fear of themselves.