The Killer Inside Me

[non capisco]

Being a huge fan of Jim Thompson's experimental 50's pulp novels and having a great appreciation for a lot of Michael Winterbottom's work I've been slavering over the prospect of his adaptation of 'The Killer Inside Me' (regularly cited as Thompson's best although personally I think both 'Pop. 1280' and especially the berzerk 'Savage Night' are even better) since I heard about it. I won't lie and say that the reports of audience disgust and walk-outs over the violence portrayed didn't whet my appetite further, as even working within the constraints of his time Thompson's stuff was often uncompromising, the reader regularly being required to live in the head of a sociopath for the duration of a novel. It sounded like Winterbottom had approached a Jim Thompson adaptation in exactly the right spirit by making something transgressive.

Well, I saw it today and I was a bit underwhelmed. The clinical detachment of the first-person narration in the novel juxtaposed with the violence of Lou Ford's actions works unsettlingly well as written word, whereas with the film you're just watching his acts play out (extremely graphically in one scene) without ever getting under the skin of the protagonist enough to contextualise them. Casey Affleck's mumbling performance doesn't really capture the duality of the bland, cliche spouting cop and the machinating psychopath capable of brutality. His Ford seems like the latter pretty much from the get-go. There's also the fact that in the novel it's hinted that Lou Ford may be something of an unreliable narrator (something of a Thompson trope and used to staggeringly original effect towards the end of Savage Night) which never raises its head here and is certainly an interesting angle, albeit admittedly one hard to capture in a screen adaptation.

Anyone else seen it yet? Hope no-one took anyone to see it on a first date anyway.

[surreal]

Yes, yes - but does Jessica Alba get naked?

[scarecrow]

Yes, yes - but does Jessica Alba get naked?

I missed it, but one of the friends I went with claimed you could see a nipple at one point.

I really enjoyed the film, though I appreciate how flawed it was. The references to Affleck's step brother and his (step?) mother didn't really explain anything. I wouldn't have minded had the character been completely ambiguous or just innately evil, but the flashbacks to his childhood seemed as though they were attempting to account for his actions, without really succeeding. I'm not sure how suited Alba was to her role, either. She didn't seem troubled enough. Who played the lady Paul Newman stays with in The Hustler? THAT is how Alba, or even Hudson, should have played it.

Still, I'd happily watch it again. I'm really into '50s films and this felt a lot like one in its tone.

edit- I didn't realise Thompson also penned the Getaway, will look into those titles you suggested, Capisco.

[Hank_Kingsley]

I love Thompson but I'm not going to bother with this one because it looks shit and life is too short for all that.

His work is so cinematic and full of atmosphere you'd have to be a cunt to make a bad adaptation, but they're out there!

After Dark, My Sweet was a fairly decent adaptation and I had a lot of time for The Grifters too. The Getaway remains the best adaptation I've seen of his work
(not seen any of those there French ones..)

Great, great writer. My favourite of his is probably 'A Hell of a Woman', highly unusual and experimental when you consider the pulpiness of his contemporaries.