6/10
Michael Winterbottom's latest film is based on a Jim Thompson pulp novel, and is already notorious for its extreme violence.
Casey Affleck stars as a sheriff in a small town in Texas in 1957. Although it is not at first obvious, he is one sick puppy with a propensity for and an attraction to rough sex that is hard to watch. Winterbottom's films are always intriguing but you don't want to see this unless you have a strong stomach.
The problem with Sheriff Lou Ford is that although he is the nicest, politest and most accommodating young policeman you could want to meet, he has a darker side. And when I say darker, I don't mean that he smokes in bed. When he is sent out to a remote house to shake down newly-arrived prostitute Jessica Alba, she greets his attempts to suggest that she might move on with a slap in the face. Big mistake. Lou turns into something rather scarier than the Incredible Hulk, without turning green, then swicthes back to Mr Nice again.
He also has a girlfriend (Kate Hudson) who has no inkling of his secret self, and only finds out rather late in the day. The film is based on a Jim Thompson pulp novel, written and set in the late 50s, when violence against women was as common as it is today, but remained unacknowledged. Thompson also wrote the books on which The Grifters, The Getaway, and After Dark, My Sweet were based (as well as writing the script for Paths Of Glory). His work is unrelentingly grim in its outlook on human nature, something which Winterbottom has faithfully recreated, which is why he has come in for so much criticism.
But don't go and see this if the seeing the pulp in pulp fiction made human is too much to stomach.
Read this for a very interesting article on the film.
