Ryan's Reviews 16: To Catch a Killer (released 2023).
Ryan's Rating: 2 out of 4 stars.
On midnight New Year's Eve 2023 a sniper kills 29 people throughout the city of Baltimore (though it could be any city and is clearly filmed elsewhere as the credits indicate Canada and Buenos Aires). A young troubled Baltimore police officer Eleanore Falco (played by Shailene Woodley who also co produced with the film's director/co-writer) is on patrol during the shootings and is inexplicably drawn to see who the sniper is. When they find the sniper's perch, during a neat moment using laser beams to triangulate all the deaths throughout the city, the Baltimore FBI office sends in Special Agent Lammark (Ben Mendelsohn), a once legendary agent who has been disgraced, to lead the search for the sniper. Lemmark senses something in Falco and selects her to be "liaison" for the FBI but she is actually his right hand investigator and she often provides key and quick insights to the case. The film continues from there.
Ostensibly, the movie is in the same vein as those 1990s and early 2000s mystery thrillers like, Silence of the Lambs, The Bone Collector, and several of the Ashley Judd star vehicles. But To Catch a Killer is nowhere as good as any of them because it never really decides what kind of movie it wants to be. At times it is a character driven mystery thriller very close to Lambs or Bone Collector at others it is closer to something like Patriot's Day where we are documenting the investigation of a tragic event (though this one is fictitious unlike the Boston Marathon bombing it is still unfortunately very believable). In the last thirty minutes it wants to be a deep drama and makes the story anticlimactic.
Woodley at first seems miscast, in her opening scenes as the patrol officer she seems out of place, but once she "joins" the FBI she fits in much better. She is also given semi-interesting character scenes, swimming alone in a pool at night, looking conflicted while in the bathroom, but they never give us more insight into her character aside from what we know. There is even a late moment where we are shown a heroin spoon and strap in her kitchen drawer which seems like it should be a big issue but is never mentioned. All these moments are intriguing because most movies would not take the time with these little character details but they don't really add up to anything. Mendelsohn is not bad as the seasoned FBI agent but most of his dialogue consists of elaborate speeches that don't give us more insight into his character. I also found they never really explain the connection Lemmark sees between Falco and the killer. This aspect is repeated many times during the movie but I didn't really see a connection aside from both being loners.
The story seems to want to comment on the state of the country with every scene and speech a way to highlight an issue facing America. The issues range from the very first scene where Falco is called to a diner because a homeless woman (who has paid for a meal) has been sitting in the diner for hours eating very slowly and has a liquor bottle in her bag. The social inequality is mentioned multiple times but there are comments on others such as: media over stimulation, mental health, mistreatment of our veterans, environment (during a dinner scene one of the characters talks about plastic pollution), how refuse companies don't actually sort out the compost/trash/recycle like they advertise, gun control, political image making, scapegoating, cover ups, and finally a sequence in a beef slaughterhouse to talk about the harm of our meat heavy diets. All these issues are important and I don't really disagree with any of the comments but the movie doesn't do anything with the issues once mentioned. They seem there simply as a catalog of American problems while never fully engaging in any of them
Directed by, cowritten, and co-produced by Damián Szifron, a successful Argentine director in his English debut, has some imposed some style to the movie. There is a lot of use of deep focus with something in the foreground and background equally clear, similar to Brian De Palma's style. There are also some good widescreen set ups and a clear framing style which is more than can be said of many movies today. The movie is also decently paced which will hold your attention for the first ninety minutes but everything falls apart in the end which is really a let down.
Overall I don't recommend the movie, it has good moments but is never a good complete film. You would do better watching those 1990s and early 2000s films like The Bone Collector or Copycat.