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Lou Ford, The Killer Inside Me

Remember that thing about how the cops on this list might be serial killers? Well, in Lou’s case, you can go ahead and change that to “definitely is a serial killer.” Ford is a small-town sheriff played by Casey Affleck who manages to hide his murderous tendencies from everyone around him. Basically, he kills people because he enjoys it. If you ever get pulled over by this guy for speeding or something, don’t try and get out of it – just pay the fine.

Hank Quinlan, Touch of Evil

Captain Hank Quinlan, an officer of the law in one of America’s seediest border towns, was a great detective. And a lousy cop. And he always gets his man – if not through the proper channels, than by any means necessary. Evidence planting, intimidation, extortion, and even murder are all at the disposal of Quinlan, as played by Orson Welles who also directed the 1958 noir masterpiece. Not that difficult to imagine him committing a series of murders if he thought it was necessary to an investigation.

Alonzo Harris, Training Day

This cop, famously portrayed by Denzel Washington is similar to Captain Quinlan in terms of tactics and what he’s willing to do to crack a case. In a way, he’s even more corrupt than Quinlan, since he’s also in the drug dealing game, using his badge and gun for fun and profit. But he’s also a little bit crazy. If he hadn’t run afoul of those Russian gangsters, maybe he’d still be killing people at will.

The Lieutenant, Bad Lieutenant

As played by Harvey Keitel in the 1992 film Bad Lieutenant, this unnamed titular character does a lot of bad stuff. He steals drugs, he sexually abuses women, he’s violent. Would you be that surprised if he turned out to be a serial killer, too? In Werner Herzog‘s follow up, Nicolas Cage‘s take on a similar character is much more deliriously unhinged, so it’s even easier to imagine him going off the deep end and storing dead hookers in his freezer.

Steve Burns, Cruising

Sometimes a bad assignment can drive a good cop crazy. That’s what might have happened to Steve Burns, who in an unfortunate coincidence happens to resemble several victims of a serial killer who’s been stalking the New York gay underground club scene of the late 70s/early 80s. So he has to go undercover in order to catch this guy – but the violent, dangerous world he spends so much time in has its effect on his psyche. By the end of the movie, he not only might be a serial killer, he might even be a gay serial killer. Hope his girlfriend’s cool with it.

“Dirty” Harry Callahan, Dirty Harry

Now, now, don’t start freaking out on me. I know that Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry is one of the most revered heroes in recent movie history, and I know he never killed anybody who didn’t “have it coming” in one way or another. But consider a tagline for the original 1971 movie: “Dirty Harry and the homicidal maniac. Harry’s the one with the badge.” When you get right down to it, maybe Harry’s violent nature brings him closer to the serial killers, creeps, and scumbags he stalks than he realizes.

The Killer Inside Me
R, 108min., 2010
Cast: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Simon Baker, Elias Koteas, Ned Betty, and Bill Pullman
Directed by Micheal Winterbottom
Screenplay by John Curran based upon the novel by Jim Thompson
 
The Killer Inside Me is a faithfully adapted, dark, and twisted gem of an exercise in B-movie noir.
 
From the faded pop color opening credit sequence, director Michael Winterbottom and his perfectly suited cast takes us back to 1950s West Texas, where Central City, Sheriff Deputy Lou Ford (played by Casey Affleck, giving one of his finest and scariest performances to date) doesn’t carry a gun and ‘sweet talks’ his way out of any bad problems. Well, that’s what Lou wants you to believe as behind his earnest smile he is one of the most disturbed and violently psychological complex characters this side of the Rio Grande.

MORE AFTER THE JUMP…

As with Jim Thompson’s acclaimed pulp novel, where we meet the local sweaty and steamy towns folk of Central City, like the two gorgeous women in Lou’s life, sexy prostitute Joyce Lakeland (Jessica Alba) and sweet school teacher Amy Stanton (Kate Hudson), the local union boss Joe Rothman (Elias Koteas), District Attorney Howard Hendricks (Simon Baker), and real estate tycoon Chester Conway (the always reliable hog in a hat, Ned Betty).
 
In another 50s noir, these characters would be the villains or the femme fatales, yet here they are as crooked as they come, but are tainted victims of Lou’s violent outbursts and diabolic schemes. When a character is hit or shot we feel their pain and see their suffering on screen in moments containing some of the most brutal violence in recent screen memory.
 
However, this film is not another excise in torture porn. Director Winterbottom and screenwriter John Curran should be championed for bringing their visually precise adaptation of Thompson’s writing. Here all of Thompson’s sex, dry commentary, and sadistic violence is brought to the screen with such a fine scope that we are reliving the macabre humor and horror of these hardboiled characters.
 
Still, we feel for them as they lay batter and bloodied on screen; Affleck’s long drawl voice festers under your skin leaving you with almost hypnotic trance for a guy, who beats Alba’s screen angel presence into a one-punch, two-punch, several-punches makeover and turns on sweet Hudson in a moment of shocking masochistic violence. Affleck plays all of his acting cards right on point with his leading ladies, from loving them in his own twisted tender way – he likes to spank his women really hard with his leather pressed belt – to his striking manic acts of violence. This is a performance from Affleck not to be missed.
 
As the film builds to the blazing inferno of a climax, we’re given another key character performance by Bill Pullman as a slick union lawyer Billy Boy Walker, a character Lou finds to be a priest of some sort, confessing all of his past sins, before finding himself in a ring of fire. The scene between Affleck and Pullman has real moments of actor chewing quality that it  makes the film an ever valued time capsule of grit and sweat in 50s noir movies.
 
While The Killer Inside Me may be rooted in the pulp novels and B-movie film noir of the 1950s, this piece is by far one hell of a film ride into the dark nature of humans and their primal feelings.
 
Grade: A-

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Cast: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson

Synopsis: A West Texas deputy sheriff is slowly unmasked as a psychotic killer.