Nicole Kidman spent most of Destroyer playing destroyer to her pristine image. I’d say she plays a perpetually angry, hard-boiled, world-weary detective in the film, but that doesn’t begin to describe how she looks. I can deal with a woman sans makeup; many people look even better without applying a thing. I can deal with a Hollywood starlet without makeup. Oh com’n, you look almost human, like the rest of us. But I wasn’t quite prepared for two hours of “Okie Dustbowl” Nicole Kidman. Glowering, defeated, sun-bleached, and ragged, LAPD detective Sméagol, er, Erin Bell (Kidman) treats most of this film as if she’s posing for the cover of “Bedraggled,” the new emag for tweakers.
Detective Bell wakes up in her car from what has to be described as a bender. Check it out; there’s a John Doe murder being investigated just a block away. She must know more than we know. As if the proximity wasn’t a clue, there’s also the purple dye-pack stained $100 bills left at the scene (perfectly matching the one Bell gets in the mail later that day at work). And then there’s the ellipsis tattoo on the back of the corpse’s neck … it’s exactly the same as both the one I just wrote after the word “neck” and the faded one on Detective Bell’s nape. That can’t be coincidence.
Ah, I see we are going to have to travel back in time to find a point when Detective Bell might have owned a mirror. And wasn’t as angry. Many years previous, Bell and her partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) went undercover to infiltrate the fairly mellow Ellipsis Gang led by the quixotic [read: lethargic] Silas (Tony Kebbell). Yeah, honestly, these guys don’t look like they’re a threat to a fantasy football league much less bank security. But, clearly, somewhere between this point in history and John Doe day, Detective Bell lost everything she cared about and now straggles to crime scenes like a lit wino.
As her modern day police work tackles old Ellipsis gang members, we get visions of where they were in the past, and their relationship to the undercover cops. One particularly alarming moment shows present day Detective Bell gratifying a bed-ridden former gang member for information. I think we see in this exactly how far Bell will go to find Silas and exactly how far director Karyn Kusama will go to turn an audience.
I feel like this is one of those roles where Kidman might be pushing an Oscar nomination, and why not? If you’re gonna look this bad and degrade yourself to this extent, don’t you deserve a little love? The role is a great contrast with Kidman’s look in The Upside, a film in which the 51-year-old A-lister still looks like a million bucks and behaves as if only a heathen would leave her bedroom without being 100% on top of her day and her image. Does this make it a better film than The Upside? Not necessarily. It does feel a bit more real, which will appeal to a certain critic film-goer. That said, good or bad, you’ll fall asleep to Destroyer long before you’ll doze off watching The Upside.
Miss Nicole, I don’t mean to fuss
But your appearance is always a plus
I know your mad skill
Impressive, and yet still
Congrats, you look like one of us
Rated R, 121 Minutes
Director: Karyn Kusama
Writer: Phil Hay (screenplay), Matt Manfredi
Genre: Disbelief for where an actress hasn’t drawn the line
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Nicole Kidman’s agent
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: That guy who can’t get over his Moulin Rouge! crush
