Rent Destroyer (2018)

To be clear it’s much more a drama than an action movie - Destroyer review by RL

Wonderful, someone has actually employed decent script writers for a change; has assumed the audience has more than the attention span of a goldfish and can cope with a cleverly revealed, non linear narrative; has not used shaky cam, hyperkinetic cutting nor cgi and has hired good actors to bring the characters to life. In the current days of Marvel and Disney I had almost given up hope. A proper film for adults. Well done.

Ridiculous - Destroyer review by MonsieurK

A film so flamboyantly bad that at times I found myself laughing. The direction is hackneyed and the script veers between the banal and the preposterous - there's barely a cliché of the genre that doesn't get an airing here. That said, a more subtle actor than Nicole Kidman might have made something of this low-grade material. Her performance here, however, is ridiculously histrionic. Instead of plausible characterisation, we're presented with an impersonation that's nearly all surface: but dead eyes, greasy hair, wrecked complexion, shambling gait and near-catatonic mumbling are not enough. The rawness that some reviewers have praised in this film I found to be wholly bogus. Kidman is at her best, I think, playing characters for whom life itself is a performance - as in To Die For, for example. Here, the relentless self-consciousness makes the character profoundly unbelievable.

Unconvincing downbeat character study - Destroyer review by Alphaville

Positive reviews of this film have focussed on Nicole Kidman’s “brave” performance as a downbeat detective in search of a murderer. Why brave? Because she wears no make-up. Wow! What an actress will do for her art! But focussing on her sullen face as she sits in her car and stares into space soon palls. The plot is painfully slow and is stalled even further by numerous flashbacks to a connected case 18 years ago (always a sign there’s something wrong with the script).

The title makes it sound as though Nicole’s going around on a vengeful killing spree, but instead we get a series of conversational vignettes with passing characters. There’s even a cliché of a subplot with her stroppy teenage daughter, which is best fast-forwarded. The narrative is so badly structured that the flashbacks build to a bank heist whose outcome we already know. The ending in the present is an even worse damp squib, deliberately devoid of thrills. Halfway through, there’s a well-shot bank heist that shows what the film could have been, otherwise it’s a long 2hr haul.

Dull turgid and too long - Destroyer review by cr

I think my review follows some of the others already on here. Awful film long grim slow depressing. Constant close ups of Nicole's face soon start to bore. The plot is not likely and drags on and on. Nicole is ok in it but a film needs more than good acting. All of the characters are ugly and unsympathetic. Avoid.

Not a great film - Destroyer review by DM

I had heard a little about this film, such that Nicole Kidman was in it, and that she put in a good performance.

Well I found it really slow going, almost to the point of boredom, but I thought see it through to the end, it may improve.

It did'nt, yes Nicole does put in a fine performance as a drunk detective, but the storyline was quite silly.

I don't wish to put people off watching it, we can all have our opinions, but for me this film just did not spark.

Nicole Kidman's best performance in an incredible micro-budget pot boiler - Destroyer review by TB

In a career full of amazing performances, this is for me hands down Nicole Kidman's best. Like a number of other actors in challenging roles, she has totally transformed herself through incredible prosthetics & make-up, but most importantly, this is emphatically not a case of simply relying on this transformation to carry the film. Like Charlize Theron in Monster or Matthew McConaughey in Dallas Buyers Club, this simply allows you to buy much deeper into the story & enhances the performance in every single way.

Erin Bell is a cop with the LAPD, who has spent time deep undercover within gangs. When we first meet her, she is as close to death as it is possible to be without being in an intensive care bed. She looks like she has spent a millennia in the baking sun, her blood has been replaced by whiskey & the last time she slept was a hundred years ago. Bell is also openly mocked & traduced by her colleagues, who express credulity that she still has a job within the police force.

Arriving at the scene of a brutal gang murder, Bell claims to know who was involved, which again is dismissed by those around her. The film then jumps back in time, looking at her evolution from a keen & fresh-faced undercover cop to the ruin of a person she is now.

The entire metaphor of the film, which Kidman plays to perfection & the director Karyn Kusama flawlessly deconstructs, is the enormous personal price that being in enforcement, especially undercover, does to a person. It can, in the case of Bell, literally destroy you. But it is absolutely gripping. It also, for a nano-budget film, has a stunning heist scene, which rivals any big budget thriller film.

I won't say too much more, as part of the joy of this film is the shocking journey that you are taken on. But this is Kidman & cast at the top of their games.

A brilliant film

Disappointing - Destroyer review by CP Customer

We were very disappointed with this film apart from Nicole Kidman's makeup looking really good, the story filming was very choppy and it was incredibly slow. The actual ending was a good twist but the storytelling was disappointing.