O Assassino em Mim

Cant help expecting more.....

The good things -

Casey Affleck and the character of Lou Ford as the baby faced psycho who thinks he is smart but isn't as clever as he believes Plausible violence - It wasn't good to watch but the situations felt real. I am still not convinced it was so necessary to have so much as you can get the point fairly quickly and then it just starts eating up film time which you could probably use better doing other things.

The bad things The ending - was stupid on so many levels. If by some chance it wasn't in his imagination then what are the chances that so many people have no sense of smell... Would have been much better to finish the film 10 minutes earlier. Dialogue. Maybe its just me and maybe it was the cinema but I just didn't catch what was being said a lot of the time. The Elias Koteas character in particular was hard to understand, and with so many little clues and pointers to whats happening and the different relationships its frustrating when you start missing things

The film as a whole felt incoherent, and I cant help thinking that there are much better films covering the same sort of area

This film was disturbing as hell! It'll make anybody who has a soul feel sick and the ending will make you mad for it's implausibility.

I wish I had never saw it.

Casey A. is a 50s Sheriff's Deputy in small-town Texas. He is a sadistic train wreck who even though he finds himself in the possession of not one but two luscious female bottoms to paddle with his belt he still has to kill everyone in sight. I may be wrong about that but it started to seem he was going to be of the "kill em all and let god sort em out" school. Even so this movie is marvelous. We get a nice little bit of back story explaining his predilections but to me it's the reactions of those around him that make the movie and not his back story. This is a layered, nuanced tale with many lovely ingredients, not the least of which is this newish, noirish serial killer type. The music is of the rockabilly, C&W, operatic type: it does wonders.

"The trouble of growing up in a small town is everybody thinks they know who you are."

I was initially interested in The Killer Inside Me because I'm a fan of both Casey Affleck and Jessica Alba, but I soon became even more intrigued by what I was reading in the early reviews about how brutal it is. And it is brutal. I don't mean the over the top, fanciful gore-drenched brutality of a movie like Saw, I mean the kind of realistic, stomach- churning violence that isn't easy to watch. This movie is definitely not for everyone, as a result. I just thought I'd put that disclaimer out there.

The story is about a 29 year-old sheriff deputy named Lou Ford who leads a double life. He's a sadistic, violent, disturbed man who hides his true nature under the gentlemanly, courteous reputation he has amongst the denizens of the Texas town he's lived in since he was born. An encounter with a local prostitute triggers the violent urges in him that have been somewhat buried, and a cascade of murders upon murders result as he tries to cover his tracks and avoid the scrutiny of a district attorney who is deeply suspicious of him. 

I though Affleck was great in this. The guy is just a natural actor, and he pulls off both the unnerving psychopath and small town local aspects of the character. I wanted Ford to get caught for his utterly despicable actions, yet I still found myself feeling anxious whenever he seemed in danger of being found out. If that's not a compliment of Casey's performance, I don't know what could be. Alba was good in her somewhat limited role, and it was a pretty risk choice for her to tackle a part like this where so much violence was directed at her character. Kate Hudson also does well in a role that very different from much of her recent work, and Simon Baker rounds out the main cast with a solid performance as the district attorney.

I was drawn into this movie from the opening credits. If you're not put off by the violence and the sex (often mixed together), The Killer Inside Me is well worth watching. I thought the ending wasn't pulled off as well as the rest of the film was, but that's really my only complaint. Recommended.

If you've followed the history of this film, then you know it was twenty years in the making. The producers who optioned the rights were on a veritable quest. At one point, Val Kilmer was slated to act, Sean Penn, to direct.

Eventually, many Thompson fans consigned the project to limbo, not knowing how passionate the parties involved actually were. (Chris Hanley is the same producer who delivered This World, Then the Fireworks -- one of the most faithful and unapologetic Thompson adaptations.) Having seen Winterbottom's final cut, I'm glad the producers took their time. The screenplay writer and director have made a film so uncompromisingly faithful to Thompson's novel that a few audience members will usually leave the theater during the most graphic scenes.

Make no mistake: This movie is more grisly than anything by Sam Peckinpah, and the subject is as misogynistic as that of Straw Dogs (though it's the character, not the director, who hates women in this case). If you're a person who can't watch or sanction scenes in which women are brutalized, then this is a film to avoid.

If not, then you're ready to see the book represented in its pulpy essence, with excesses and virtues on display.

Psychopathic sheriff Lou Ford is equal parts self-destructive sadist, con man and facade. For him, excessive politeness and long-windedness are forms of veiled hostility. Brutal sarcasm is delivered in a good-natured everyman way. Everything Ford says is double entendre, the punchline, only apparent to him. He ushers people to their doom in the same tone he might use to offer them a drink.

Other film adaptations, from Tavernier's Coup de Torchon to the 70s version of Killer, have missed Ford's quintessentially Southern hostility. Those French and So Cal readings failed to recognize the specific way in which Thompson, himself a Texan, turns the naive good-natured American stereotype on its head. Winterbottom understands it and shows it, as does his lead.

The actor who plays Ford is famous but not yet so ubiquitous that his celebrity obscures the power of Ford's character. Since character carries an unusual amount of weight in Thompson stories, Casey Afflick was a perfect choice: Likable and chameleonic, with an admirable range and a delivery so spent and inviting it will remind you of Bill Clinton's. You don't just enjoy this portrayal of Ford because he's an interesting villain. You actually sympathize with the character's attempts to regain self-control.

When I read a reviewer's description of Ford listening to classical music and reading Freud, I groaned. I thought he'd been reduced to another Hannibal Lecter. The psychopath who resembles a James Bond nemesis and reveals his intelligence by listening to classical music and quoting Nietzsche is an '80s cliché.

Not to worry: Affleck's Ford never talks about culture and he never air-conducts.

From the period-specific tone to the apparent humility and social restraint of the killer -- which made readers sympathize with him even after he committed acts that seemed designed to justify the death penalty -- this film is to Thompson what Wynton Marsalis is to Miles Davis: Reverent to the point of sacrificing personality, but giving back everything in terms of performance, style and formal correctness. The attention to form was particularly appreciated: Having read the book twice, I knew what was coming and still enjoyed the ending.