First, Jennifer Lynch (David's daughter) tried to thrill us with her 2008 serial killer effort Surveillance. About the best thing anyone can say about it is that it's a whole lot better than her feature debut, the completely bugnuts Boxing Helena. Now Michael Mann's child Ami is out to try and accomplish the same thing. With Texas Killing Fields, some of the same crime territory is mined, and sadly, some of the same moviemaking mistakes are present. If interested film fans want to know what to expect from Ms. Mann, the answer is...nothing much at all. While initially compelling, the results eventually fall apart like so many initial police profiles.
We are in a small town in the Lone Star state (hence, the title). Local law enforcement officer Det. Mike Souder (Sam Worthington) is investigating the death of a prostitute with his New York transplant partner Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan). They fear it is another in a growing list of related crimes, the bodies of which always wind up in the local swamp (thus, the title). When his cop ex-wife (Jessica Chastain) asks Mike to look into a similar situation out of his jurisdiction, he says no. Brian, on the other hand, takes matters in his own hands. Then the killer decides to turn the tables, making the policemen his target. When a local runaway (Chloë Grace Moretz) goes missing, our heroes hope to pool their resources and catch the fiend before it's too late for her...or for them.
Texas Killing Fields is the cinematic equivalent of a sentence without linking verbs. It's a random series of scenes shuffled together like a playlist on an IPod. Ms. Mann may think that she's reinventing the genre with her sometimes surreal dreamscape noir, but feigned ambiguity is one thing. Being purposefully obtuse and confusing is another...and it's not very entertaining. It's one thing to build up a sense of place and atmosphere. It's another to do so while forsaking things like narrative clarity and drive. Texas Killing Fields swelters like a dead armadillo along Interstate 35, and everyone appears sweaty and uncomfortable, but that's nothing compared to the pain inflicted on the audience, especially those trying to figure out the core whodunit.
But there are bigger problems here. Since we are dealing with a genre so overdone that the RomCom is jealous, we need more than weirdos and a bit of moody dread to make this all work. Like David Fincher's fascinating Zodiac, which is really concerned with police procedure circa the late '60s/early '70s, there must be some novelty in the approach or freshness in the plotting. Instead, Texas Killing Fields spends way too much time on locale and not enough on logic. We want the standards - set-up, suspect list, twist, false ending, payoff - but also need them tweaked a bit so we don't feel like we're wandering down the same storied path. Even the characters are rote - Mike has a bad temper, Brian feels like a Yankee fish out of water - and both carry the kind of baggage you expect. But Ms. Mann does nothing with them except use them as focal point in a narrative collage that never really comes together.
In fact, the biggest fallacy here is that this film has anything to do with the actual Killing Field crimes. Unsolved to this day, the actual true crime story appears to be nothing more than a legitimizing McGuffin, there to give the action some purpose beyond the cliched good vs. bad dynamic. Somewhere buried deep within this muddle mess of a movie is a pretty solid thriller. Sadly, Ms. Mann and her cast can't find it - and neither can we.
Texas Killing Fields is the cinematic equivalent of a sentence without linking verbs. It's a random series of scenes shuffled together like a playlist on an IPod. Ms. Mann may think that she's reinventing the genre with her sometimes surreal dreamscape noir, but feigned ambiguity is one thing. Being purposefully obtuse and confusing is another...and it's not very entertaining. It's one thing to build up a sense of place and atmosphere. It's another to do so while forsaking things like narrative clarity and drive. Texas Killing Fields swelters like a dead armadillo along Interstate 35, and everyone appears sweaty and uncomfortable, but that's nothing compared to the pain inflicted on the audience, especially those trying to figure out the core whodunit.
But there are bigger problems here. Since we are dealing with a genre so overdone that the RomCom is jealous, we need more than weirdos and a bit of moody dread to make this all work. Like David Fincher's fascinating Zodiac, which is really concerned with police procedure circa the late '60s/early '70s, there must be some novelty in the approach or freshness in the plotting. Instead, Texas Killing Fields spends way too much time on locale and not enough on logic. We want the standards - set-up, suspect list, twist, false ending, payoff - but also need them tweaked a bit so we don't feel like we're wandering down the same storied path. Even the characters are rote - Mike has a bad temper, Brian feels like a Yankee fish out of water - and both carry the kind of baggage you expect. But Ms. Mann does nothing with them except use them as focal point in a narrative collage that never really comes together.
In fact, the biggest fallacy here is that this film has anything to do with the actual Killing Field crimes. Unsolved to this day, the actual true crime story appears to be nothing more than a legitimizing McGuffin, there to give the action some purpose beyond the cliched good vs. bad dynamic. Somewhere buried deep within this muddle mess of a movie is a pretty solid thriller. Sadly, Ms. Mann and her cast can't find it - and neither can we.
