April 29, 2023
One New Year's Eve, when the skies of Baltimore were lit up with fireworks, 29 unrelated people were randomly hit and killed one after the other, by a single bullet each. A quick investigation determined that all the bullets came from a single location in one building, which also exploded that same night. This meant there was only one shooter. The FBI assigned senior investigator Geoffrey Lammarck (Ben Mendelsohn) to take over the case.
Of all the policemen in the Baltimore PD, Lammarck specifically noted Officer Eleanor Falco (Shailene Woodley) as to her astute analysis of the gunman's personality. Lammarck believed that Falco's checkered damaged history may help her get into the mind of the killer. However, the two of them faced tremendous pressure from the politicians of the city who wanted a quick shortcut to the crime's resolution.
This film co-written and directed by Argentinian filmmaker Damián Szifron, writer-director of 2014 Oscar Best Foreign Language Film nominee and BAFTA Best Foreign Language film winner, "Relatos Salvajes" ("Wild Tales"). It unexpectedly began with a shocking killing spree of 29 victims all happening within the first five minutes. For the perpetrator of such crime to be simply be called a "killer" in the unmemorable title was a wasted opportunity for more impact.
The plot of getting into the mind of a mass murder to try to find him may sound a lot like the plot of "The Silence of the Lambs." However, the approach of storytelling is not the same. There was a lot more time devoted to talking scenes between Eleanor and Lammarck which lacked tension and urgency. Szifron even had to revive the lagging momentum with another mass killing in a mall lest he lost the attention of the viewers.
The ending sequence was very disappointing because again of the interminable talking between Eleanor and the killer. We already knew at that point that we are dealing with a mentally-disturbed man, but their conversation did not really add more insight to his deeper motivations that led him to kill so many random people. Shailene Woodley's Eleanor was too low-key and dour to get audiences to root for her. 5/10.
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