Butler's Cinema Scene

Nicole Kidman

“DESTROYER” My rating: C-

120 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Virtually everything about “Destroyer” — from its title to the plotting, dialogue and star Nicole Kidman’s Oscar-bait makeup transformation — screams overstatement.

Written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi and directed by Karyn Kusama, this joyless (and, let’s face it, off-putting) crime drama aspires to noir greatness but succeeds only in alienating with its blend of cliche and unearned angst.

Along the way it wastes Kidman, a hugely talented actress who here is limited to a sort of slow-burn psychosis.

When we first meet L.A. Police Det. Erin Bell (Kidman) she’s sleeping in her car, looking pretty much like death warmed over. Sunken eyes, sallow/blotchy skin, painfully projecting cheekbones, cracked lips.   Kidman is borderline unrecognizable; she could be a “Walking Dead” extra.

(In fact, we’re immediately reminded of Charlize Theron’s Oscar-winning uglying-down for “Monster.”)

Some 16 years ago Bell was part of an undercover operation that went horribly bad. Her partner Chris (played in flashbacks by Sebastian Stan) was killed by members of the bank robbery gang the two had infiltrated.

Now Bell receives a threat in the mail…a $100 bill stained with purple dye from that long-ago bank job.  It can only mean that Silas (Toby Kebbel), the gang leader who vanished shortly after the deadly heist, has returned to settle the score with Bell.

Bell has to get him first.

Working solo, Bell looks up old gang members hoping for a thread that will lead her to Silas. She gets beat up regularly.

That may actually be preferable to what she does for one former robber (James Jordan) who has been released from prison because he’s dying of cancer. On his death bed this creep trades information for a hand job from the detective. (By this point delicate souls will be streaming from the theater.)

Bell also tracks down and kidnaps Silas’ old girlfriend (“Orphan Black’s” Tatiana Maslany), trying to get closer to her prey.

“Destroyer” wants to be a character study imbedded in a crime thriller, but Kidman’s Bell is so off-putting it’s hard to care.  She’s screwed up everything in her life (her teen daughter, played by Jade Pettyjohn, hates her and hangs with a twenty something creep), and it is impossible to believe that a woman with her obviously antisocial — nay, pathological — attitude would still have a job on a major police force.

The screenplay does offer at least one late-breaking major twist, but by the time it’s presented most viewers will respond with a numbed shrug.

Director Kusama — who after a promising start in features (“Girlfight”) and a lame sophomore effort (“AEon Flux”) has spent the last decade in premium TV (“Billions,” “The Man in the High Castle,” “Halt and Catch Fire”) — approaches the material with smothering solemnity and an utter lack of humor.

The result is a technically acceptable but dramatically (and humanistically) excruciating experience. Theaters showing “Destroyer” should install showers at the exits.

| Robert W. Butler