Concrete Playground

If we are to believe cinema, murder is a game of cat and mouse. Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me has a cat — Lou Ford (Casey Affleck), a sheriff in a small Texan town. It also has mice — a lot of female mice.

It is unsurprising that many people have dropped the M word (misogynistic) — from five year-old girls to submissive prostitutes (Jessica Alba) to blindly supportive girlfriends (Kate Hudson) — the film’s female characters are made all the more tragic by the fact that there is no counterpoint (no girl with her shit together) to balance them out. These women are, to their detriment, faithful to the end.

But the upper hand does not belong to the men in the film, either. They are psychotic, hopeless or consumed with unresolved suspicion. The Killer Inside Me is a well-made movie because the film itself holds all the power. It is a bleak story told uncomfortably well, staying true to its origins as a Pulp Fiction style story, and holding you through every kick and punch until it finishes on its own terms.