Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2011

©Copyright 2010 KIM PRODUCTIONS, LLC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I’m not sure Michael Winterbottom was the best director to bring this bleak pulp novel by Jim Thompson to the screen. It’s about a ’50s west Texas deputy sheriff—a polite, soft-spoken, even intellectual guy—who happens to be a psychopath. Not only does he kill, but he kills those he loves, without guilt or conscience, and he doesn’t know why. The problem is, neither do we, really, and the director never quite manages to explain it, making the character (an effective Casey Affleck) as well as the story seem incomplete. Some scenes of unforgivable violence against women.