Review: Twisted

Twisted is too afraid to intimately probe the sticky relationship between sex and violence.

Twisted
Photo: Paramount Pictures

Seals act as silent witnesses to a series of grisly murders in Philip Kaufman’s Twisted. Why they perform such a role is anyone’s guess, but there they are, leisurely sunbathing in the San Francisco Bay, appearing as sleepy and bored as audiences will likely feel while enduring this apathetic serial killer thriller written by Sarah Thorp.

Ashley Judd is homicide investigator Jessica Sheppard, a tough go-getter who doesn’t play by the rules at work (she likes to kick perps in the groin) or at play, which consists of habitually picking up random guys at bars. Jessica drinks lots of wine to mask the pain that her father saddled her with (he committed suicide after killing her mother), but regularly getting tipsy proves problematic when her former one-night-stands begin popping up dead.

Images of fog enveloping the Golden Gate Bridge foreshadow Jessica’s escalating inability to figure out if she’s responsible for the story’s killings, while Kaufman’s ham-fisted direction makes every meaningful clue stand out in stark pop-up book fashion. The red wine. The photo of Jessica’s dead daddy. The A-list actor who mysteriously disappears from the film for 30 minutes so we can forget he might have anything to do with the crimes. The film’s screenplay, filled with subplots that magically disappear when they’re no longer convenient and narrative misdirections that wouldn’t fool a seal, is twisted in all the wrong ways.

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Although it’s fleetingly suggested that Jessica’s voracious carnal appetites might be related to her volatile temper, Twisted—unlike Clint Eastwood’s similar but superior Tightrope—is too afraid to intimately probe the sticky relationship between sex and violence. It also entirely drops the issue once the list of suspects has been narrowed down to two.

Ensnared in a film determined to play it safe, Judd, Andy Garcia (as Jessica’s partner), and Samuel L. Jackson (as the police commissioner and Jessica’s surrogate father) all go through the motions with unremarkable competence. Their performances are largely upstaged by those watchful seals, whose piercing wails during the opening credits convey despair over being forced to participate in such a rote suspense film for no discernable reason at all.

Score: 
 Cast: Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia, David Strathairn, Russell Wong, Camryn Manheim, Mark Pellegrino  Director: Philip Kaufman  Screenwriter: Sarah Thorp  Distributor: Paramount Pictures  Running Time: 96 min  Rating: R  Year: 2004  Buy: Video

Nick Schager

Nick Schager is the entertainment critic for The Daily Beast. His work has also appeared in Variety, Esquire, The Village Voice, and other publications.

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