Day 23 -- Twisted

Released: February 27th, 2004

Starring: Andy Garcia, Ashley Judd, Samuel L. Jackson

Writer/Director: Sarah Thorp/Philip Kaufman

Description: Jessica, whose father was a serial killer, is a female police officer. While investigating a murder, she finds herself in the center of her own investigation, when her former lovers start dying around her at a furious pace.

[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]

***

The crime thriller genre is an interesting one. It's always a crapshoot, you either get a well-written, well-acted drama, or you get an extended episode of Law and Order. Some of the best keep me guessing while some give away the ending in the first half-hour.

"Twisted", unfortunately, is the latter. The movie stars the queen of the crime drama, Ashley Judd, who starred in five movies of this genre between 1997 and 2004, as Inspector Jessica Shepard, the first female detective in San Fransisco homicide. 

Once she takes her new job, a serial killer decides to kill people that Shepard's slept with in the past, which makes her the prime suspect. After she finally cracks and is arrested for the murders, it is revealed that it was Samuel Jackson's character all along who has been killing those men along with her father, her mother and the men she slept with, too. This all occurs after he tries to set up, Andy Garcia's character for the recent murders like he did her father for the past ones.

Despite the talent in the movie, "Twisted" is very flat and kind of boring. Jackson mails it in, and Andy Garcia does an Al Pacino impersonation in ever intense scene. You know, his voice gets way too loud, and he over-acts. Judd plays the same character she plays in these movies: smart, tough as nails women with a dark past. It's like they all played it safe and didn't give the movie much emotion.

The direction was on par with the rest of the genre. Lots of jump cuts, dramatic music, and a ton of dark locations. Like every thing else, there was nothing that really stuck out.

Most crime thrillers like to have their twist endings to have a link to something that was threaded throughout the film. This is the one case where I thought they did something interesting. At multiple times in the movie, Jackson's character gives Shepard a "test", which mainly consist of memorizing certain things in the room, and her skills in this "test" help her to realize that Jackson's character (who raised her after her parents died) has been the villain all along. It was a cool use of a seemingly throwaway scene in the movie. But again, not outstanding enough to make the film stand out.

Rating: 5.5/10 -- Very bland crime thriller, which is inexcusable given who was cast in the movie. One positive is that I forgot Judd is one of only three women who I think look just as hot with their hair short and long (Natalie Portman and Carey Mulligan).