The brash violence of Michael Winterbottom’s The Killer Inside Me — adapted from Jim Thompson’s merciless and enthralling 1952 pulp novel about a psychotic West Texas sheriff — began dividing audiences last January at Sundance . It also appears to have divided Winterbottom himself, though he doesn’t know it. The controversy involves two particularly violent scenes, one a protracted sequence in which a character played by Jessica Alba is beaten until her face resembles what one character calls “stewed meat, hamburger.” The nutso sheriff, played by Casey Affleck, throws perhaps some 20 punches; we see about six or seven of them land, as Alba’s face becomes progressively bruised, bloodied and misshapen, until it resembles a cracked-open, oversized plum.
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REVIEW: Characters Deserve Better in Violent Killer Inside Me
