Ever since her auspicious debut with Girlfight in 2000, director Karyn Kusama has been drawn to stories about flawed, driven protagonists, but she’s never had a heroine as forceful or complex as Erin Bell, the LAPD detective played by Nicole Kidman in Destroyer. Bell is a onetime undercover cop whose experience infiltrating a gang of thieves went horribly wrong, and who lives in a constant state of regret, resentment and rage — a volatile combination when the murder of one of her former associates opens up old wounds. The expertly constructed script, by Kusama’s frequent collaborators Phil Hay and Matt […]

Here’s the way it used to be. You made an edgy, well-received independent film, one that showed your facility to tell a story and work with actors, and the smart Hollywood scripts — quality writing that required the touch of someone outside the system — would arrive in those expensively-printed agency binders. And that’s the way it seemed to be playing out for Karyn Kusama, who made an excellent debut with her gritty, low-budget Girlfight, a female boxing movie that launched the movie career of Michelle Rodriguez. But then a couple of things happened. First, her follow-up, Aeon Flux, was […]