SCREEN

TWISTED

Josh Bell

It's a bad sign when the audience at a free screening laugh at the film, especially if it's a supposedly suspenseful psychological thriller like Twisted. By the time Ashley Judd's Inspector Jessica Shepard drinks herself into a stupor and blacks out for the third or fourth time, no one is able to take this predictable, tedious film seriously.


Virtually everything about Sarah Thorp's script is routine from the first frame, as Jessica is promoted to the homicide division, thanks to her close relationship with San Francisco Police Commissioner John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson).


Her first case with new partner Mike (Andy Garcia) involves a serial killer targeting men she's slept with, a wide pool because, in addition to being a drunk, Jessica also picks up strange men. She becomes a prime suspect, and has to clear her name while tracking the real killer, fighting discrimination in the police department and getting laughed at by the audience. It's tough.


Director Philip Kaufman made classics like The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being. Here, he only seems interested in pointing the camera and getting paid. All Judd has got to go on here is her performance, which is rote and uninspired. Ditto the rest of the cast, who perhaps couldn't get past Thorp's clumsy dialogue and predictable plot twists.


The movie seems to have been made almost in spite of the efforts of all involved, and audiences are right to laugh at a film that can't even bother to show them a modicum of respect.

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