Director: Damian Szifron
Genre: Thriller/
Crime/ Drama/ Action
Runtime: 119
minutes
Year:
2023
Starring: Shailene Woodley, Ben Mendelsohn, Jovan Adepo, Ralph Ineson
Description: Baltimore. New
Year’s Eve. A talented but troubled police officer (Shailene Woodley) is
recruited by the FBI’s chief investigator (Ben Mendelsohn) to help profile and
track down a disturbed individual terrorizing the city.
Review: A good cop thriller needs an interesting detective duo with chemistry. A
recognizable and atmospherically portrayed setting, be it a small town or the
big city. And, of course, an enigmatic killer whose motive and identity are
unraveled in the course of the film through good detective work. Precisely on
this last point, notwithstanding the title, things go wrong in “To Catch a
Killer”.
While this atmospherically shot
film does begin promising. On New Year’s Eve, twenty-nine people are shot dead
in Baltimore by a sniper. There seems to be no connection between the victims. The
FBI is flown in an the case comes under the direction of agent Geoffrey Lammark,
exactly the kind of hardboiled detective we know from this type of movie. During
the investigation, he scouts local police office Eleanor Falco as his
assistant.
Even though Ben Mendelsohn
and Shailene Woodley are both amazing performers, together they do not work.
They have no chemistry whatsoever and for some reason I never buy Woodley as a
cop. At least not the chosen cop to be assisting the FBI on such a huge case.
The film has some boring
moments. If the characters were more interesting, the more quiet scenes would have
been much more engaging. The plot
suffers from too much randomness and implausible twists and turns. This becomes
especially evident in the finale where we learn who the killer is and what
motivates him. It turns out to be downright disappointing. I understand why
this film never reached Dutch cinemas.
Rating: 2/ 5
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