This place is nothing but chaos. Your God
John Chard
This place is nothing but chaos. Your God doesn’t even come here. Texas Killing Fields is directed by Ami Canaan Mann and written by Don Ferrarone. It stars…
This place is nothing but chaos. Your God doesn’t even come here.
Texas Killing Fields is directed by Ami Canaan Mann and written by Don Ferrarone. It stars Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jessica Chastain, Chloe Grace Moretz, Jason Clarke, Annabeth Gish and Stephen Graham. Music is by Dickon Hinchliffe and cinematography by Stuart Dryburgh. Film is based around real events involving the many murders of women whose bodies have been found in a desolate area of road and wasteland between Houston and Galveston.
Ami Canaan Mann is the daughter of Michael Mann, one of the masters of modern day crime story movies, so it’s not very surprising to see Ami, for her sophomore production, venture into murky waters. Texas Killing Fields is a bayou noir, where although the title hints at human devastation unbound, it’s actually a slow burning skin itcher more concerned with the people investigating crime than that of the perpetrators. How the sorry events affect all who come in to contact with the crimes at the film’s core, is what drives Texas Killing Fields on. Sadly the screenplay takes on board too much and nearly derails an otherwise very good movie.
If it comes down to atmosphere and technical smarts in achieving such? Then this is one of the finest of recent times. There’s a constant sense of broody foreboding throughout, the haunting landscapes are all gnarly and spectre like, the whole area literally stinks of death and misery. Even when the story is away from the fields of the title, there’s a mood of despair filtering out from Mann and Dryburgh’s lenses, the hot Texas weather draining every ounce of sweat from the emotionally troubled detectives. All of the atmosphere is helped considerably by Hinchliffe’s music, which piggybacks the misery with ominous bluesy tones.
Unfortunately all this deft atmospheric craft can’t stop the screenplay from being annoying. A sub-plot involving Worthington and Chastain as ex husband and wife is as pointless as it gets, which simultaneously wastes Chastain in the process. The makers have chosen to actually have suspects front and centre for the crimes on screen (unlike the real life cases, most of which remain unsolved), well they intend to keep it mysterious, but anyone paying attention will catch on quickly enough. There’s also problems with the sound mix, which at times is appalling, rendering some crucial dialogue exchanges as inaudible.
Cast are good, especially Morgan and Moretz, and Mann shows a good hand at action sequences to compliment her astute mood setting skills. But this still feels like a misfire, and subsequent critical appraisals and internet rating systems have it as just above average. That’s a little unfair, there’s much for the neo-noir/crime movie crowd to get enthralled by here, but Mann may need to sharpen up her story telling whiles to fully bloom her undoubted potential. 6.5/10
★ 8 / 10
Good, moody film...
jmsfan
I don't know exactly what some people expected from this film given some of the negative reviews, but I loved it. I keep reading "disjointed," "incoherent,"…
I don't know exactly what some people expected from this film given some of the negative reviews, but I loved it. I keep reading "disjointed," "incoherent," "jumbled," etc. I found it to be anything but.
There seems to be some confusion as to the relationships between the two sets of suspects in the film. Well, the blonde, tattooed suspect and his pimp friend are basically a red-herring to the main "Killing Fields" case. Yes, they are responsible for the death of the first dead girl found by the detectives, whom Sam Worthington focuses on in the film, complete with the stakeout on the evidence-laden car. His partner, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan is determined to solve the cases of murdered girls found in neighboring bayou areas. It's not really his or his partner's jurisdiction, but he feels compelled to help the neighboring county police chief, played by Jessica Chastain. Chastain also happens to be Worthington's ex-wife.
It's hinted that Morgan, a New York transplant, had been on a similar case there that went unsolved, but we're not given every bit of information and that's okay. We're just supposed to know that he's driven to solve this case, even if he breaks some rules to do it. Some people have complained that the cops get away with beating suspects and breaking the rules...well, I'm sorry, but it does happen sometimes in real life, especially when peoples' lives are on the line. The guy who is beaten by Morgan for wearing the dead girl's ring around his neck...Morgan lost his temper, yes, but the man was wearing evidence and not cooperating and his other friends came in to try to beat on Morgan, so the cops could say what they wanted, whether we side with them or not, and I did side with the cops.
Like others on the boards, I have kinfolk who live in and around Texas City and it's true that it doesn't look exactly like the movie portrays, but I didn't really care about that. I was focused on the story and the film itself and it really works for me on those levels. Plus the performances are uniformly fine. Morgan appears to be the "good cop" i.e. the level-headed one at first, and Worthington the hot-head. By the mid-point of the film, the roles seem to shift with Morgan going off-track with his focus, at least at first glance. He plays both ends of the spectrum without it being hammered over our head and he does it very nicely.
His determination pays off finally. It's his friendship with a local, troubled teen, played by Chloe-Grace Moretz, that finally helps him in his journey.
Worthington does great as the more seething partner, whether he's badgering Morgan about their not focusing on their own case, or rattling suspects' cages in interrogation, or almost ruining Morgan's questioning of witnesses. He also does a turn-around but it's nearer to the end of the film. Only while helping a character gather belongings to go to a new location does he seem to have calmed a bit.
Chastain, who is one of my favorite actresses, is fine here, but her part is not huge. It's mostly sprinkled throughout the film at vital times. Still, she does fine with the part she's given, which is the sheriff whose misfortune it is to have numerous unsolved murders throughout the years go unsolved because the soggy, barren bayous make perfect dumping or "killing" grounds for murderers. It just so happens that the ones that the film focuses on are a case that is ongoing. She relies on Morgan's help, much to her ex-husband's aggravation.
Moretz is super in the film. Her put-upon, unsupervised young girl is vital to the film. She is known to the two main detectives as they frequently find her roaming around town, taking her back to her broken home, "run" by her partying Mom, played by Sheryl Lee. Lee usually has more than a few men hanging out there, making her daughter leave the house at odd hours so Lee can party. This puts Moretz in jeopardy throughout the film, which provides quite a bit of tension.
The look of the film is moody, the music is great, particularly at the film's close, and I was pleased with the ending, although some have cried foul at the "happy ending." Given what each character has lost by the end, I wouldn't say that it's happy, but a just ending. I'd recommended it to anyone who likes compelling stuff that isn't everyday cops-and-robbers.
Also, some have said that the film doesn't disclose what happens to the tattooed-blonde or his pimp buddy. I have the Blu-Ray DVD and the scene does give some closure on at least one of them, although the other's fate is left unknown. But that just adds to the realism of the movie and didn't even faze me about the film as a whole. Again, give it a chance. Don't expect a classic but a good, solid, almost-noirish movie and you'll enjoy it.
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wow I love Chastain thx !