Movie Review: Twisted

Twisted

After having sat through a showing of The Passion of the Christ, I was more than ready for a little mindless and entertaining suspense. I thought Twisted might provide it. I've rarely been so wrong.

Twisted tells the convoluted - well, twisted - story of newly promoted San Francisco Homicide Inspector Jessica Shepard (Ashley Judd). Raised by the city's Police Commissioner John Mill (Samuel L. Jackson) after her parents died, she may have the ear of a powerful man but she's a brilliant cop in her own right. What she tells very few people is why she's so motiviated to work homicide. When police psychologist Dr. Melvin Frank (David Strathairn) finally gets her to look at the influence of her past on her present career choices, she's none too pleased to look the facts in the eye. Perhaps it's that long term refusal that has made her drink so much as well as engage in dangerous and destructive sexual behavior.

It seems both what she wants and what will prove most damaging to her when her first case as a homicide inspector involves a man she knows from a one-night stand. But when another body with a similar M.O. shows up and it's also a man she's slept with, she becomes her own number one suspect. Along with her new partner, Mike Delmarco (Andy Garcia), she's propelled along a course that could result in finding that she is the city's newest serial killer. Complicating matters is a cop she once slept with and who refuses to let go (Jimmy Schmidt, played by Mark Pellegrino), the other inspectors in the department who resent her presence there, and a quirky medical examiner (Camryn Manheim) who has the evidence to either condemn or absolve Jessica from a crime spree that seems unstoppable.

The storyline for Twisted is quite good, and the script almost lives up to it. The foggy San Francisco Bay area sets the tone for a movie largely filmed in dim lighting and appropriately so. The problem with Twisted is the fact that it's almost literally an advertisement for "Bad Acting Theatre." Samuel L. Jackson, Ashley Judd, and Andy Garcia are all capable of more (Jackson and Garcia have done stellar turns in other movies, and even Judd showed some acting chops in some previous efforts), but the direction of Twisted takes what could have been a decent thriller and brings it down to nearly a B-movie level. The lines are spoken as if they're lines, not as if they're felt in any way by the actors speaking them. Judd is by far the worst culprit here, but Manheim is a close second, and she's normally much better than that, too.

The story told by Twisted is almost good enough to let the bad acting go, but the acting is so bad that it brings the film's redeeming qualities down with it. I'd recommend you save your money until you can get Twisted as a rental where you can sit at home and throw popcorn at the screen as you feel so moved.

FAMILY SUITABILITY: Twisted is rated R , largely for its very mature subject matter and an underlying current of violence. Although the sex is not overt, the innuendo sometimes is, and the violence while not typically graphic does result in some nasty looking corpses which are shown in some detail. Twisted isn't for kids under the age of about 15, nor is it for the easily upset of any age.