Another story about a cop in L.A., another tale of moral corruption. Of course, that’s what Karyn Kusama’s latest film, Destroyer, is about on the surface. But beneath the thematic log line, there is so much more to the complexity of a tormented by her past officer named Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman, who has proven she can look any and every age with this movie). Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (longtime collaborators and no strangers to the odd tension that exists between the Hispanic and Caucasian population of L.A.–see: their true masterpiece, Crazy/Beautiful, for further proof), the interspersed flashbacks that slowly unfold how Bell, as she’s referred to by the few people that want to notice her, provide a tense buildup to the ultimate truth she must admit to herself. And it isn’t that she must finally face that perhaps she’s a bad person and that no attempt–regardless of how diligent–at restitution can ever remedy this categorization. No, it’s more than that. It’s reconciliation with the notion that maybe one’s life is totally worthless, wasted.
That is, if a girl can’t at least somewhat correct a wrong by exacting revenge on the person who allured her down the wrong path. In Bell’s case, it was perhaps the LAPD itself for enlisting her too early in her career for an undercover case requiring her to infiltrate a gang run by the ominously named Silas (Toby Kebbell–a sort of young Javier Bardem type). Paired up with the more seasoned Chris (Sebastian Stan, fresh from playing Jeff Gillooly in I, Tonya), Bell embarks on her first foray into the ethical gray area of being a cop. Quickly to find that the seduction of the “wrong path” is too intoxicating to resist as she easily falls into the groove of being a “family” with Silas’ fellow gang members, Petra (Tatiana Maslany), Arturo (Zach Villa) and Toby (James Jordan). And though she and Chris are merely supposed to be posing as boyfriend/girlfriend, the two end up playing the parts a little too well as Erin finds herself pregnant before long. One might think this would jolt her back into the realm of what it means to be a “good person,” but instead, it makes her want to seize an opportunity to take a cut of the money from Silas’ next bank robbery and defect from the operation with Chris, both planning to claim to have lost contact with the gang before their heist.
The event, which occurred seventeen years ago, clearly didn’t go according to plan based on Erin’s current aesthetic, wearing her emotional trauma as physical skin–somewhat jaundiced, to boot. In between drinking and evading, Erin has been briefly reinvigorated with a purpose upon finding that Silas is active again now that he’s run out of money from the last time. The lawyer secretly laundering all that money to him, Dennis DiFranco (Bradley Whitford, a long way from his Adventures in Babysitting bohunk days), is the one Erin seeks out with the nose of a bloodhound (starting with one of the most disgusting hand jobs ever rendered to the silver screen). For she knows he’s the one who can give her the greatest clue as to Silas’ next move. It is DiFranco who mocks her for showing up to his Palos Verdes palace with the line, “You know what successful people do? They move on.” A harsh truth to spit, but then, there’s no arguing that Erin has failed at many things in her life, including being a mother to her sixteen-year-old daughter, Shelby (Jade Pettyjohn, who should consider a name change in order to transcend into the next Amanda Seyfried). Shelby’s steadfast rebellion against Erin still isn’t enough to distract her from her vendetta. The only thing that might bring her some semblance of peace.
With so many low angle shots in Erin’s present state of decrepitude, it’s almost as though Kasama wants to hit us over the head with an homage Hitchcockian California noir. At the same time, the subtleties of Destroyer, all typically awash in the ironic sunshine of L.A. to further punctuate the city’s underbelly of darkness, are what make it so jarring. Particularly as we reach the final act, a crescendo that results in Erin’s desperate last stab at redemption, which is possibly the only thing that a destroyer (both of others and the self) has to make do with at a certain point in her life, when she’s finally come to terms with a generally pathetic existence. And yet, while “the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” some are brazen enough to gamble that quietness of their desperation on a loud chance to break free of the mold. Of course, as cop movies of this nature have taught audiences time and time again, that gamble is never worth it upon realizing the outcome. But how can a girl resist trying when she’s naive enough to think she’s got nothing to lose?
So if not being able to move on in the wake of discovering that even the scrappiest, seemingly most resilient of average people have something to lose makes someone a failure, well then, most women are in good company with Erin. Especially most L.A. women.
