One of the sad realities of our fascination with true crime, is that filmmakers are making fewer fictional crime thrillers of the Seven and Along Came a Spider mold. Well, because they are fairly inexpensive you get a lot of them in the straight-to-VOD arena with B-list or fading actors. But it’s rare that a film like To Catch a Killer arrives with a straight-forward cat & mouse plot, and a pair of A-list actors in Shailene Woodley and Ben Mendolsohn.
Unfortunately, To Catch a Killer will leave you reaching for the latest true crime podcast for the suspense that is sadly missing. Even the lazy title sounds like it was taken from an episode of Dateline. Woodley brings an anxiety and restlessness to the role of Eleanor, a rookie cop with a mysteriously traumatic past. As fireworks explode over the city of Baltimore, a killer with military precision takes advantage, slaughtering 29 people. Eleanor, already an outcast among the primarily male police force, finds herself roped into the investigation when lead FBI investigator Geoffrey Lammark (Mendelsohn) overhears her random comment comparing the killer’s actions to the swatting of bugs. Lammark, a stereotypically tough, stoic investigator with an insubordinate streak, immediately makes Eleanor his liason. Along with hard-nosed detective Mackenzie (Jovan Adepo, wasted here), they endure pressure from those with political ambition while hoping to find the killer before he inevitably strikes again.
To Catch a Killer could’ve been really good, but it’s unclear promising Argentine filmmaker Damián Szifron (of the excellent Oscar-nominated Wild Tales) knows how to make an American crime thriller without falling into cliche. The glacial pacing bears the hallmarks of a David Fincher film, but without the crucial tension or compelling villain it just comes across as dull. Crucially, the dialog co-written by Szifron is often clunky, dropping quotes by Kurt Cobain (for real) as armchair criminal psychology. There are some great exchanges between Eleanor and Lammark which draw a connection between her personal demons and those possibly faced by the killer. At certain points in the film, and this is especially clear if you watch past trailers, it’s clear that Eleanor is designed as a sortof junior Clarice Starling from Silence of the Lambs.
Montreal makes for a VERY poor substitute for Baltimore, a city with such recognizable personality it has been the home for some of the best crime projects in history, including The Wire. You can’t just say something is set in Baltimore and not shoot it there and expect it to be the least bit believable.
Plotting is a mess, swerving between dull procedural, strangely unrealistic action, and oddly-placed social commentary. While the killer’s ability to cause massive amounts of death in seconds should peg him as truly dangerous threat, he’s not that compelling of an antagonist. His motivation, revealed in a bizarre, unsatisfying standoff so bad it might’ve been written on a wet dinner napkin, is so unconvincing they literally discard it moments later and it doesn’t even matter. Woodley and Mendelsohn fight against the tide to make To Catch a Killer a worthy manhunt film, but they both deserve much better than this.
To Catch a Killer is in theaters now.
