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Although it falls apart before the final credits, Michael Winterbottom's shamelessly erotic (from a hardcore S&M perspective) "The Killer Inside Me" is a compulsively sadistic take on the 1952 pulp novel by Jim Thompson.
The film strives to be a racy post modern noir but falls short, a failure for which Curran's script adaptation is more to blame than Winterbottom's concise and graphic direction.
Casey Affleck turns in yet another star-making performance, this time as Lou Ford, a polite and unassuming deputy sheriff in the town of Central City, Texas.
Everybody thinks they know Lou as well as their own kin. They don't. Acting on orders of his alcoholic boss, Sheriff Bob Maples (Tom Bower), to run local prostitute Joyce (Jessica Alba) out of town, Lou instead falls for the tramp, because she arouses his violent sexual urges (after she slaps him a few too many times).
Lou returns the favor in spades. After a union leader confides that Lou's adopted brother died while working on a building site run by big dog businessman Chester Conway (Ned Beatty), Lou dives into a cycle of murder that threatens his relationship with his intended bride Amy (well played by a full-figured Kate Hudson).
While some audiences will find the film's sexual brutality excessive, these scenes of acted-out dominance and submission expose intimate psychological aspects of characters who would otherwise remain inscrutable.
Like many cult films, "The Killer Inside Me" is destined to become a touchstone in spite of its glaring flaws.
Rated R. 109 mins.
