For better or for worse, Karyn Kusama’s new thriller Destroyer sets out to answer a central question: What happens when a person lets guilt and shame pick the meat off their bones?
Nicole Kidman — who scored a Golden Globe nomination for the lead role — is transformed, with mousy gray-brown hair, stained teeth and eyes that make her look like she hasn’t had eight continuous hours of sleep in 17 years. Her character, Detective Erin Bell, probably hasn’t. It’s been that long since she wrapped an undercover sting inside a criminal gang — a pursuit that ended fruitlessly and tragically.
The film begins with a dead man on a concrete riverbank. Bell staggers to the site, the booze on her breath practically wafting off the screen, poking around a crime scene that two investigators say isn’t in her jurisdiction. They shoo her off, and she shuffles away flipping them the bird. Bell, dogged and stubborn, begins a mission that we expect might save her soul.
She starts hunting down the usual suspects, versions of whom can be found in many a crime thriller: a tattooed gun smuggler, a dying man with a guilty conscience, and a former gangster who has cleaned up his act. Meanwhile, Bell contends with her rebellious teenage daughter Shelby, played by Jade Pettyjohn, who was just as fantastic in the 2016 indie comedy Girl Flu as she is here. Shelby acts as a barometer that measures Bell’s apathy, alcoholism and despair. But she’s also like a funhouse mirror — through her we can see a different version of Bell, a mouthy teen full of life and mischief. And we see everything she’s lost. The film is peppered with flashbacks to Bell’s time undercover, which remind us just how gorgeous Nicole Kidman really is. They also offer snapshots of the film’s heartless villain Silas (Toby Kebbell), who exerts control over his band of thieves through psychological intimidation.
Despite a third-act twist, the script is unimaginative. Destroyer relies too heavily on Kidman’s makeup and her character’s stiff-legged shuffle. When you look outside Kidman’s performance, what’s left is a semi-interesting story made stale by a hackneyed screenplay. Writing dialogue that centers on such a dispirited character can’t be easy, but much of the script reads like a Law & Order episode — hardly material worthy of one of the more capable actors working today. When Bell confronts Shelby at the hospital after the kid gets in a bar fight, she slams her hands on the bed and bellows, “How far do you think this will go?”
Even worse, in a flashback, Bell watches her boyfriend walk away. “Hey!” she calls after him. “Nice butt.”
Screenwriters Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi, who together penned Ride Along, Ride Along 2 and Clash of the Titans, can’t summon the emotional depth the Bell character needs for the story to work. Kidman is capable of so much more. It’s a shame that the script doesn’t let her shine.
Much of the buzz surrounding Destroyer is a response to Kidman’s makeup. Culturally speaking, we audiences love to see our hottie actors transformed into unattractive lowlifes. Part of that is likely due to our fascination with metamorphosis — how many pounds has Christian Bale lost and gained for roles over the years? But when it comes to women like Kidman in Destroyer and Charlize Theron in 2003’s Monster, we use a significant word: brave. It’s brave to choose not to be beautiful. It’s brave to be ugly. Or fat. Or to look tired or angry or bitter. Apparently, it’s brave to physically embody any emotion that American women have every right to feel in 2019. What’s more, commending Kidman for being brave implies that being beautiful tops her list of achievements. Refusing flawless skin and ivory-white teeth doesn’t make an actor brave — it just means she’s doing her job.
If you really want to see Kidman act, check out Big Little Lies. In that HBO series she’s drop-dead gorgeous, but she’s given a script that makes use of her immense talent.
