But by the time the ace British director Michael Winterbottom has finished with the tale of this West Texas lawman in the early 1950s, and his liaisons with a prostitute, his romance with a girlfriend, and his not-altogether-upright involvement with a union boss, a construction baron, and his son, well, a whole bunch of people are dead.
Casey Affleck, Oscar-nominated for his work in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (he was the coward), stars as the deputy Lou Ford, and he gives this character an easygoing, bone-chilling charm. (Two memorably twisted gentlemen with the same surname, go figure.)
The Killer Inside Me is tough, disturbing stuff: We're tagging along with a sociopath as he explains himself, reveals himself, works things out inside his head.
Affleck couldn't be better. And if Lou's a little kinky, taking his belt to Joyce Lakeland, the prostitute played by Jessica Alba, she doesn't seem to mind. But by the time he's through with her, the bleak, bloody pummeling is devastating.
Like his protagonist, Winterbottom doesn't let up: He trains the camera on the actress' face, then cuts to Affleck's Ford with his leather gloves, socking away like a fighter in the ring. Back and forth, back and forth. It's killing.
The Killer Inside Me was booed at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Folks walked out. So be warned: This isn't easy to watch, and it will stay with you for days. But it is also one of the strongest adaptations of a Thompson book, up there with Stephen Frears' The Grifters and James Foley's underappreciated After Dark, My Sweet. It's a psychologically haunting portrait of an extreme personality, an amoral, violent, lonely man.
