Destroyer (2018)

(On Cable TV, February 2021) Anyone who has seen the underseen 2015 thriller remake The Secret in their Eyes won’t be that surprised at Nicole Kidman’s drastic physical transformation in Destroyer. Taking a hint from the previous film’s mixture of dark Los Angeles police drama, deglamorized appearance, neo-noir plotting and merciless ending, Destroyer goes deeper and harder than its predecessor. Kidman turns in an arresting role as a burnt-out Los Angeles cop who gets involved in a murder case with ties to her early days as an undercover agent. The jumbled chronology deliberately obscures events taking place across three distinct periods of time, our only guide being Kidman’s transformation from an adorably round-cheeked rookie to a gaunt middle-aged woman running on borrowed time. The film’s subject matter isn’t any more cheerful, what with her character going on a rampage of personal revenge and hurting a lot of people along the way. The film feels completely at ease in its Los Angeles setting, even when it’s taking bits and pieces of heist movies and removing anything remotely exciting about them. Even the film’s centrepiece action sequence (a completely unprofessional shootout between cops and robbers inside a bank) is bleak, grim and reprehensible. It gets much worse by the end. This unrelenting griminess takes its toll — Destroyer feels far too long at 123 minutes and would have left more of a mark at a lesser length. But then again, there’s probably only so much we can take from seeing Kidman as a husk of her former self being powered solely by revenge and paying a very high price for it. Fans of dark crime fiction will best appreciate the result, as will those who are curious to see glamorous actresses making a strong bid for dramatic intensity by thoroughly giving themselves up to an unlikable character.