Film Reviews

Texas Killing Fields

• Rating:
• Director: Ami Canaan Mann
• Starring: Sam Worthington
• Details: US / 105 mins (12A)

Creeping in completely under the radar (no press screening, minimal publicity), the second film from Ami Canaan (daughter of Michael) Mann, does a lot of things right, but can't quite hold its plot together long enough to work cohesively. That said, she makes a gorgeous, wonderfully moody film, and knows how to conjure up some fairly foreboding atmospherics.
Loosely based on a true story, the film centres on the hunt for a serial killer in Texas, who is killing women and disposing of their bodies in a rural patch of land called "the killing fields." Jeffery Dean Morgan's New York detective works with Sam Worthingon's local cop to investigate the killings. When a local girl (Grace Moretz) goes missing, the killer taunts them, and it quickly becomes a race against time to find her.
Like her father, Mann is gifted in cinema aesthetics. She knows where to put a camera, and nails the sombre tone of proceedings wonderfully. Naturally, being a story about a serial killer, this is bleak stuff. Comparisons - not just with Mann Sr's work - but also Seven are inevitable: serial killer taunting the cops, general bleached look etc. But being based on a true story, this film has more of a solid grounding that the countless rip-offs of David Fincher's modern classic.
The problems are with the structure of the plot, which should wring more tension out of its solemn set-up than it manages to. The killer is so obvious from the second you meet them, that any attempt that the plot makes to hide it just becomes completely transparent - thus killing (pun intended) any attempt at compelling viewing in the process.
Mann directs her core cast members with consistency, and her direction overall is assured and grounded. The script just needed a little more subtlety to really engage and horrify the viewer.

Review by Mike Sheridan