IMPORTANT NOTE: This piece was written during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike. Without the labor of the actors currently on strike, the movies being covered here wouldn’t exist.
Released: 8th June
Seen: 10th October
Sometimes it’s really hard to figure out how to open one of these things, especially now that there’s a format that begins with “Rambling paragraph that provides some context for the film that’s about to be talked about”. The problem is that some films don’t really give themselves anything to work with because it’s so middle of the road that you might as well describe the method for which white lines are painted on the middle of the road. It’s also the hardest kind of review to write, trying to find a couple of hundred words to say “It’s fine I guess” That explains why it’s merely fine but also gives enough information that people who might still enjoy it will know about the film’s existence. Basically, this is going to be dull for all concerned but I saw it, it came out this year, therefore it gets written about so here are some thoughts about To Catch A Killer.
To Catch A Killer starts on New Year’s Eve around the stroke of midnight when a fireworks display ends up being the cover for the sound of bullets as a sniper picks off dozens upon dozens of people seemingly at random in time with the explosions. This naturally becomes a federal case that’s being led by Special Agent Lammark (Ben Mendelsohn) who brings beat cop, and actual protagonist, Elanor (Shailene Woodley) on to help him solve the case. As tends to happen with this sort of crime, they investigate a number of leads, keep being held back from their jobs by the system and have to deal with some side issues that make it just a little harder to solve the murders.
To Catch A Killer is very much your standard issue crime thriller, checking off the checklist of what you expect from this kind of film. Scenes of people on phones tracing calls, moments of undercover work where the protagonists almost have their man but end up losing him due to something they didn’t plan for alerting the target to their presence and a whole bunch of dramatic monologues by assorted criminal figures are just a few of the stock standard scenes that’s played out here in pretty stock standard fashion. There’s nothing here you haven’t seen before or seen done better in pretty much any other crime film, hell you can find most of this stuff happening every week on any network police procedural except they do it all in under 40 minutes instead of over 2 hours.
Now this is not to say that these scenes are bad, just because these are just standard versions of all the genre tropes doesn’t mean they’re badly done. Some of them are actually pretty exciting, a scene where a sting operation happens in a supermarket has some real tension and a decent payoff plus the opening scene is actually quite powerful in its intensity but it feels like stuff you can see anywhere with nothing to really make this version stand out. The story isn’t doing anything new or interesting, the ending isn’t enough of a surprise twist to make everything more exciting in retrospect. To Catch A Killer is shooting for something akin to Silence of the Lambs but without the intriguing story, fun characters or revolutionary filmmaking to earn that comparison.
Again, not saying the filmmaking is bad because it isn’t. There are some good shots here, the opening shot, in particular, is actually quite beautiful and there are a lot of moments where things are well edited in a way that builds tension and intrigue in the overall narrative. However, there are also moments where things feel like they’re edited in the same way a Criminal Minds episode might handle it (one particular cut to black felt almost identical to the way a cop show would end an act before a commercial break). There’s nothing that’s particularly bad but also nothing that gives the audience anything special beyond that opening shot where the camera is turned upside down and everything looks like a strange surrealist painting. Maybe if the cinematography kept up with that level of intrigue, there would be something much more interesting here but they don’t, it’s well filmed but not interestingly filmed.
Even the performances end up just being kind of fine, serviceable on a level where you don’t particularly hate spending 2 hours with these people but you don’t look forward to it. There are some interesting elements to the characters, particularly Elanor who gets an emotional backstory that they keep adding onto the more and more To Catch A Killer goes on but they’re not interesting enough to really care that much about them. Sure, you can sit there with them and at least be entertained by what’s being done but you’re not going to remember much about them, it’s even hard to remember their names at times because it just doesn’t matter that much.
The sad part is that there is a moment when maybe To Catch A Killer could’ve elevated itself by handling the somewhat modern issue of extreme online assholes who jump on conspiracy theories and use those to hurt people, white supremacists who have no problem killing for their cause, and incel violence. These topics are brought up in exactly one scene as a potential motive and for a moment it felt like maybe To Catch A Killer was going to actually play around with some important and touchy topics that would give it some modern relevance, perhaps even talk about the pipeline between those views and people who commit political violence… but that would be interesting, this film doesn’t want to make the interesting choice. It makes the safe choice by dismissing those very things it brings up and instead going with the more generic “What if it’s just some crazy person?”
At the end of it all, To Catch A Killer is fine enough to not feel like a complete waste of the time spent watching it but it’s not going to be on any list of films you have to see right now. It’s serviceable, the kind of film that will probably end up being bought by a lot of TV networks who want something to fill the airtime that’ll probably keep a few people entertained for a while. It’s not particularly memorable but it’s also not something that does anything worth really hating. There are interesting ideas that are gestured at but never actually addressed and a few performances that are better than the material really deserves and that’s about it. It’s fine enough if you somehow ran out of crime TV shows to watch and want something familiar and comfortable, but you will not be remembering this for much else. It’s fine, fine is sometimes all something needs to be.
Movie Meister Reviews 