Counting up on Wikipedia, Nicole Kidman’s filmography comes out at more than 60 movies. She can be forgiven, then, for the occasional dud. But Destroyer isn’t a dud, and she is brilliant. Told in present day, where Kidman plays haggard, dysfunctional cop Erin Bell, the film flashes back where she plays that same cop some 30 years earlier, operating undercover in a gang that holds up a bank with tragic consequences. There’s a fair bit of violence in the film, both in the present day and flashback sequences, and rather too much of ‘old’ Kidman staring impassively at the camera. The makeup is excellent, as ‘young’ Kidman doesn’t look all that different to how she looked 30 years ago in her early films. Certainly, there’s little of the cool sophistication of many of the characters she tends to play now.
My rating: 4 stars
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 