Movie review: Nicole Kidman too tough for his own good in the hard-boiled LA-noir-thriller

”I am big. It's the pictures that got small.” Billy Wilders classic line from “Sunset Boulevard” ringing in your ears after seeing Nicole Kidman in “Destroyer”. The luminous actor seemed calculated for a while, but have been surprised in recent years and now it's time to hit the world with amazement and come out as ugly. There is always a buzz in the air as a glamorous actress put on fulmask. As if it was about to become something completely alien, an alien, an animal. It is so difficult not to. It is mostly about letting go of the face, impair posture and play, as Patricia Arquette in “Escape at Dannemora”. But Kidman want to wear a mask before his transformation. Layer with mask.

for his long awaited performance is a tough little noir about a degenerate cop who never recovered from a derailed infiltrationsuppdrag early in his career. All self-respect and all hope of happiness died that day. Since then she has dried up to a ödleliknande wreck. The skin cracked and sun damaged, the eyes sunken. On long, wobbly jeansklädda ben wanders she arrive at LA Rivers as solskadade and cracked river bed and casts a glance at a döing while colleagues looking away, badly affected. Commissioner Bell is a disgrace to the corps.

It is beautiful. “Destroyer” is shaped after their city. Atmospheric pictures, but above all, the movement is the Los Angelesk. The eternal bilfärderna between high and low, broken and beautiful, plastic and genuine. The gallery of odd characters who manage to give the illusion of having invented themselves and chosen their lives, whether they are pengatvättare in Palo Alto, worn bankrånarhustrur talking love with a flesh wound in the legs, or former criminals who devotes his life to helping undocumented mexicans.

Nicole Kidman is not allowed to just be there. She does not melt in.

Philip Marlowe-the fist in the stomach and ends blow up. It had been a genuine pleasure to see this film if it had not been so high-strung. As tough as it cracks. Is it because a woman wants to do raw action on a raw woman? Or to the goddess to descend in an indie movie? Tension destroys in any case, much of the experience. Mask has created a work of art rather than a face to Kidman, the wig is so rigid that it seems to be able to slide by, their eyes blackened as in the theatre and the music and believe that every step she takes needs to be stressed with rumbling dissonance.

Nicole Kidman is not allowed to just be there. She does not melt in. Either it is she who is stratosfäriskt good and the movie is for the “small”. Or so, the film is a skillfully told thrillerpärla – which I suspect – and Kidman is a disaster. Anyway, they are not designed for each other.

Three other noir films from Los Angeles: ”The long goodbye" (1973), ”Chinatown” (1974), ”LA Confidential” (1997).

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