Destroyer

Overwhelmingly consumed by guilt and vengeance, a forlorn detective wearily trudges on.

Notoriously dishevelled, she struggles to deal while attempting to advise her restless daughter.

Having once infiltrated a heist prone entity, she lost everything after she failed to act.

And the individual who's haunted her for 16 years has finally resurfaced, within her reckless domain, his sights set on lucrative crime, boldly flaunting arrogant tension.

She continues to break the rules she's never followed to desperately gain an edge, and accidentally finds herself mired in steep misfortune.

Spiralling swiftly down.

Wildly reckoning sincere uncertainty.

Destroyer flexes gritty wayward concrete confrontation to adjudicate chaotic perception.

From flesh wound to break to hemorrhage to paralysis, it scoops up the lugubrity in piles of distraught doom.

Aptly succeeding at presenting direst woe, it's a little too blunt for my tastes, the intervening scenes lacking the visceral nuances that hold films like To Live and Die in L.A. or French Connection together, shocking violence erupting like periodic head shots every 8 minutes or so, or body checks in a hockey game, except that after each check the play stops and doesn't resume again, and then it suddenly starts back up and there's another check shortly thereafter before it stops again, this pattern repeating until the film's solid ending.

It's obvious that the filmmakers are capable of crafting something more subtle and nuanced and steady and memorable, something less discontinuous, or something that artistically cultivates discontinuity, but perhaps budget constraints got in the way or Destroyer's an initial offering from a fledgling craftperson, still learning to brew something less pulpy and generic.

It does function as an effective warning against both corruption and revenge however, Erin Bell's (Nicole Kidman) dismal distillation a potent reminder to let things go, no matter your gender, to move forward at some point after a period of grieving, and apply yourself with resurgent vigour to whatever tasks eventually present themselves.

Books and films and paintings and television provide limitless options to promote either contemporary or retro lifestyles.

As do sports and the daily news.

Even if even The Guardian is remarkably grim these days.

That used to be the advantage it held over The New York Times for me.  It wasn't so grim. And didn't focus on the United States so much.

It's nice when you meet people who are also living in the present regardless.

A present that isn't consumed with grasses greener.

Where resilient people make the most of their present means.

And occasionally sit back chillin'.

When all their work is done.