LA Is Grim, And Nicole Kidman Is Grizzled, In 'Destroyer'
An LAPD detective with a murky past appears in every scene of Karyn Kusama's new drama. Light and dark, male and female, hero and antihero, it's a thriller that plays with the conventions of noir.
In Destroyer, Nicole Kidman looks like a hot mess.
In the opening scene, her character, Los Angeles police detective Erin Bell, lumbers out of the car she slept in all night. She's got puffy, red eyes; dull, disheveled hair; no makeup.
Weather-beaten, she hobbles like a wounded animal to a crime scene along the concrete bank of the LA River. The raspy-voiced cop in a black leather jacket peers at a corpse with tattoos.
"What about if I know who did this?" her character asks.
The film flashes back to when
