InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 16

FILM REVIEWS
mass shooting is indeed name-checked here, as are Covid
lockdowns and political extremist groups like the Three
Percenters. All of which is to say, the film is attempting to set its
story amidst our current and endless national debate about gun
violence and a polarized population where angry white men are
isolated and radicalized. The staging of the shooting is arguably
in poor taste — the film is attempting to be released in a week
that doesn’t coincide with a high-profile mass shooting, a near
impossible task — but all the same, it’s brutally effective in
conveying the pervasive fear of being gunned down in a public
place. To Catch a Killer moves between a series of locations
bustling with humanity, allowing just enough time to scan the
frame in anticipation of whose head might explode in a red mist
— Szifron repeats this motif a few times throughout the film,
even in scenes where there is no immediate violence, creating an
unnerving Pavlovian effect. The sequence then concludes with
an evocative shot where forensics teams located around the city
trace the trajectory of the shooter using green lasers, all pointing
toward the same high-rise window just as it explodes with
comic-book villain flourish.
The investigation is led by Lammark, a sour, paranoid G-man who
speaks in rah-rah platitudes — the film attempts to
humanize the character by giving him a doting husband, which it
cynically treats as a “gotcha” twist. Stymied by the mayor’s office
which refuses to lock down the city out of fear of losing a multibillion-dollar
development deal, and penned in by his D.C. bosses
who second-guess his methods, Lammark finds himself on a
short leash and unsure of who he can even trust; that is, until he
overhears Eleanor describing the killer in language better suited
for a Tumblr post than a bullpen — “Evil is cutting off a bird’s
wing just to see what happens; this guy’s swatting mosquitoes'' —
and takes a shine to her. Highlighting her mental illness, history
of insubordination, and substance abuse as assets for this case,
Lammark elevates Eleanor to his small investigative team
(alongside Babylon’s Jovan Adepo), hoping she’ll be able to
recognize the scent of another disenfranchised loner before he
strikes again. It’s a laughable conceit, attempting to recreate the
Will Graham-Jack Crawford dynamic of Manhunter, only if
Graham’s prior experience was limited to rousting drunks and
making coffee. The film frequently has to contort itself simply to
justify laying the case at the feet of a shaky greenhorn instead
of, say, an experienced criminal profiler (Woodley, for her part,
comes across every bit as lost as one would expect, never quite
tapping into an alleged reservoir of dysfunction and unique
insight). In the end, the case is broken wide open not by
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