Nicole Kidman has fallen into a bit of a rut of late. Australia’s golden girl, the Oscar winning heartthrob of the 2000s, has churned out some truly mediocre films with a few stunningly lifeless performances in recent years. This period of her career ends with Destroyer. Karyn Kusama’s neo-noir is Kidman as we’ve never seen her before, almost unrecognisable under layers of prosthetics playing a broken, hard drinking detective hanging around L.A’s underbelly. It’s a performance without vanity, easily the best Kidman has been in years.
LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman) hasn’t lived an easy life. In a city where the crime wave never subsides and tragedies scattered throughout her life leave wounds that haven’t healed, we meet her looking like death warmed up. Arriving at a crime scene with a hangover so bad she can’t walk properly, the body that greets her brings back previously buried memories.
She knows who did this, a case she worked on long ago holds the answers. Yet finding the gang leader known as Silas (Toby Kebbell) is not an easy task. In a city where rampant wealth disparity combined with the U.S.A’s penchant for military grade weapons means the rule of law is becoming an abstract concept.
Destoyer is a film about anger, how it shapes a life and later corrupts it. One of the most destructive forces in anyone’s life also makes a lot of sense in a world where tragedies never fade and unpleasantness resides in every level of society. Kusama has had an uneven career but this uncompromising film brings her back into frame as a talented filmmaker who can make the most with what she’s given. Kidman has never been afraid to take risks and having worked with almost every major director of the last 20 years she’s found a great partnership with Kusama.
They’ve brought out the best in each other, Kidman’s performance as an anti-hero detective has been done plenty of times before but she makes this role her own. Importantly it’s not a gimmick role. Erin Bell looks like a the offspring of Nicole Kidman and the rotting women from The Shining, but under the make-up there’s physicality to back it up. The way Kidman holds herself from the walk to the way her eyes constantly leer into the distance make this character what it is. It’s an extraordinary performance, maybe the best she’s ever been.
Kusama’s direction never compromises but it knows when to pull back for effect. This is a hard-boiled detective noir with real substance and it’s complimented greatly with her cinematic touches and Theodore Shapiro‘s soundtrack. It’s also easy to see how this could have gone awry, considering the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi oversteps the mark. In trying to be gritty it becomes over reliant on the word ‘fuck’ and it tries to be too clever, coming out as convoluted. Including one needless revelation at the end. That being said, shades of nuance isn’t something you’d look for in a film that shares scriptwriters with Clash of the Titans, Aeon Flux and R.I.P.D.
Although it can’t quite overcome some of the uneven groundwork, Destroyer succeeds on the strength of Kidman’s performance and the direction. In this age where women are taking control of their stories and the way in which they’re told, this is the kind of experience that shows us all what we’ve been missing.
Destroyer is in Australian cinemas from 21 March through Madman Films.
