Director: Michael Winterbottom
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Pulp writer Jim Thompson’s 1952 novel is adapted for the screen for a second time following a 1976 version with Stacy Keach, replaced here by Casey Affleck as Lou Ford, a small town sheriff with a violent streak. He’s charged with running Jessica Alba’s prostitute out of town but begins an affair with her instead, kicking off a confused murder-blackmail plot that plays second fiddle to the exploration of Lou’s twisted psyche. But it’s a film that struggles to make an impact as neo-noir due to woolly plotting, an utterly repellent and irredeemable protagonist and a woefully miscast Affleck. He once seemed like an actor capable of anything but he’s let down here by the unfocused material and an unnecessarily grotesque level of violence that the story simply can’t justify.
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