{"id":1053,"date":"2018-10-26T17:49:10","date_gmt":"2018-10-26T17:49:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/?p=1053"},"modified":"2018-10-26T17:49:33","modified_gmt":"2018-10-26T17:49:33","slug":"book-v-movie-review-jim-thompsons-the-killer-inside-me-1952-and-2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/2018\/10\/26\/book-v-movie-review-jim-thompsons-the-killer-inside-me-1952-and-2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Book V Movie Review: Jim Thompson\u2019s The Killer Inside Me (1952 and 2010)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Killer Inside Me book cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bringing Jim Thompson to the screen cannot be an easy task. To date, the best adaptation of the 1950\u2019s pulp novelist\u2019s work is Stephen Frears\u2019s The Grifters. <\/em>That 1990 film combined Thompson\u2019s hard-boiled dialogue (appropriately adapted by fellow crime writer Donald E. Westlake for the screenplay) with a stylized glaze of noir, resulting in an ultra-gritty, hyper-sexualized, and shockingly violent reality that did the bleak master of the criminal mind justice.<\/p>\n

The Killer Inside Me<\/em> was first very quietly adapted in 1976 by director Burt Kennedy (which this writer, to date, has not viewed). Michael Winterbottom\u2019s 2010 adaptation of the 1952 book, however, seems to have been deemed the official and legitimate one\u2014 in spite of the fact that it falls somewhat short of the book\u2019s brilliance.<\/p>\n

The Killer Inside Me <\/em>centers around Lou, an outwardly affable 1950\u2019s small-town Texas Deputy Sheriff. He is engaged to a local woman of respected social standing. He lives in his late father\u2019s former household\/medical office, which is a beloved piece of the town\u2019s history. No one has any reason to suspect Lou of anything sinister until a young prostitute shows up in town and ignites something in him that even he can\u2019t fully comprehend. Dead bodies start trailing Lou along every path he takes.<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s book was praised by Stanley Kubrick as \u201cprobably the most chilling and believable first-person story of a criminally warped mind I have ever encountered.\u201d This is precisely what makes the book such a great, down-and-dirty read: you\u2019re inside the mind of psychopath. His rationalizations and internal justifications start to make terrifying sense after just a few chapters, and his inability to empathize starts to seem strangely logical. Like many great writers, Thompson’s work flourishes when he is channeling the dregs of society. Like all flawed movie adaptations, The Killer Inside Me <\/em>suffers (especially if you\u2019ve read the book) because it is unable to fully externalize its protagonist\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

\"Casey
Casey Affleck in The Killer Inside Me<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Michael Winterbottom has repeatedly proven himself to be a director who only gets the best from his actors. His gift for eliciting performances that are full of life and spontaneity is part of what makes the film work as well as it does. While the film is filled with an array of excellent supporting talent (Bill Pullman, Kate Hudson, Jessica Alba, Elias Koteas, Simon Baker), it is truly Casey Affleck\u2019s show with his portrayal of Lou. Affleck\u2019s natural, dangerous charisma is a mask for the character\u2019s fractured interior. He never plays it as an outright villain, as equally shocked as he is aroused by his actions. Affleck\u2019s face is a map of the character\u2019s internal thought process, and there\u2019s enough going on behind it to communicate Lou\u2019s pathology.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, Affleck\u2019s performance is not quite enough to communicate the greatness of the book. Winterbottom\u2019s approach to the material is so objectively loyal to Thompson\u2019s narrative that it comes close to losing its point. The film could have benefitted greatly from a style that reflected Lou\u2019s logic through some more innovative filming and\/or editing choices.<\/p>\n

The Killer Inside Me <\/em>is an unflinchingly brutal book, and that\u2019s one thing the film captures to full effect\u2014 almost too much so. The brutality alone, however, fails to capture what\u2019s most terrifying about Thompson\u2019s book: Lou\u2019s brain.<\/p>\n

As it stands as a film, The Killer Inside Me<\/em> is a successful and darkly humorous character study of a wholly twisted mind that is highly underrated and under-viewed. Not quite a masterwork, it manages to serve as a worthy companion to Jim Thompson\u2019s novel without being a completely satisfying or full realization of its brilliance.<\/p>\n

BOOK GRADE: A<\/strong><\/p>\n

MOVIE GRADE: B+<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bringing Jim Thompson to the screen cannot be an easy task. To date, the best adaptation of the 1950\u2019s pulp novelist\u2019s work is Stephen Frears\u2019s The Grifters. That 1990 film combined Thompson\u2019s hard-boiled dialogue (appropriately adapted by fellow crime writer Donald E. Westlake for the screenplay) with a stylized glaze of noir, resulting in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1055,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1053"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1099,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1053\/revisions\/1099"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/otherpeoplesmovies.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}