Killing Fields

In the Texas bayous, a local homicide detective teams up with a cop from New York City to investigate a series of unsolved murders.

The casting on this film is perfect -- Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and the flawless Chloe Moretz. The directing and cinematography are great, with the dark, gritty feel that one would expect from your better serial killer films. And the story, despite being disjointed, is a pretty good one.

That being said, I have a major problem with this film -- it is fiction. My understanding is that the police involved with the real case were hoping this film would promote the true unsolved murders in the "Texas killing fields". Well, I am sure they must be disappointed. The story is fake, the solution is fake... they even changed the name of the city.

Now, here is the thing... if you are going to call this film "Texas Killing Fields" and then make it about nothing related to the case, the least you can do is put a featurette on the DVD. I know two former detectives who are willing to talk about the case. I know some family members of victims who have a story to tell. If one of the goals was to promote the real case (in order to get it solved), the people behind this movie did not do even the most basic of things to accomplish this goal.

If I pretend that this movie was not very loosely based on a true story, I can be more praising. Like I said, it looks great and the cast is phenomenal. Moretz never fails to impress, and I think Morgan should be an A-lister in the world of Hollywood. He impressed me in "The Resident" and again here.

While I have not read other reviews, I suspect there is a running theme to talk about the director's father, maybe saying things like "being in his shadow". I hope these sort of comments are few and far between. Ami Mann holds her own, and whether she was a famous director's daughter or not, she has the skills and is blazing her own trail.

The movie itself is really on the verge of being really good. But it never quite reaches that top. Still it is a wonderful acted and photographed movie. The story keeps you on your toes (or the edge of your seat from time to time), though you sometimes wish there would be a clearer and easier to follow narrative. On the other hand you could argue that that is the strong point of the movie.

Being based on real events, this obviously had some high expectations to fill (read there was some notion from the real detectives, who were hoping to get new clues on happenings in that area, though I can't confirm if that is true or not). And it shouldn't matter or make a difference on what you think of the movie. Either you like it or you don't. No matter what is really going on. You can't put that kind of pressure on a low budget movie like this one.

Apparently this is based on true events which occurred several decades prior spanning for a long time. This film has more so the feel of an episode of CSI or any police crime drama thriller type we have seen before. Also somewhat reminded of True Detective but this was obviously made before that. It starts off slow, picks up the pacing and interest a little in the middle then doesn't exactly reach to great heights as it should have.

Chloë Grace Moretz is possibly the standout in a very early tome portraying a troubled teen. The highlight and climax involves her being ultimately kidnapped with the lead cop (Sam Worthington) finding the killer in the house and ultimately taking them down. The reveal of the killer was far too predictable and rather anti climatic. In the end, this film wasn't anything special and was rather average.

I was sort of hanging for this film, great cast, story line that can make for great viewing, and I like the setting of the story as well. And after another lackluster year when it comes to entertainment on the big screen, I thought this could be great!

Well sadly to say it is messy, when it comes to this kind of cop film, you need direction, some one that can tell the story at a good pace, connect all the dots, get you engrossed in the mood of the film, make you sit and wait for more clues and so on, but this film lacks all of that.

Sure the acting is solid, but I expected that with the good cast, but it just does not flow at a good pace, it jumps over some dots that should be connected to make you feel you are part of the characters, and that's where this film is messy, hence my score of 5, sort of sits in the middle.

Nothing special, but not bad either, 5 out of 5 for this one.

With a great cast list, I jumped at this film with enthusiasm. This was met with a complete underutilisation of some of my favourite actors. For what it was Jeffrey Dean Morgan played his limited role well, Sam Worthing over acted his role making him less convincing and Chloe Moretz was vastly underused.

The plot is difficult to follow and some scenes seem completely unnecessary and others feel as though there needs to be more detail. The story overall suffers from a lack of telling and too much showing. The main plot itself was rather predicable and ultimately let me shaking my head in disapproval. Putting this aside there were some parts of the film that made it interesting and the overall story was good in premise.

I suppose I don't want to hate this film, because it has so much potential. It left me feeling disappointed, but as a point of reference of something done badly that could be brilliant, this is the perfect case.