Warning: I’m going to sort-of spoil “Destroyer” (2018) for you. Nicole Kidman uglies herself up to play a burnt-out detective with one last shot to close the case that’s haunted her for 17 years. It felt like “Rush: The Later Years” or a dark take on “Saving Grace.” We keep going back and forth between her ill-fated days undercover and her current attempt to find resolution. I was kind of getting into it, although there’s too much I’ve-been-a-bad-mommy subplot. But the film buries a lie in the back-and-forth to create a plot twist, and I don’t like being lied to.
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Back in 2005, when there was more of a distinction between theater movies and TV movies, longtime television star and second-tier cinematic leading man Tom Selleck began TV movie franchise based on Robert B. Parker’s detective novels. Although formulaic, “Jesse Stone: Stone Cold” benefits from Parker’s rich dialogue, as well as Viola Davis and Mimi Rogers in supporting roles. Selleck gets to play something familiar (a sleuth, this time as a small-town Massachusetts police chief) yet not (one with a drinking problem and a sordid past). It’s good, as far as TV movies go, back when there was a distinction.
In the middle of “The Devil’s Own” (1997), Brad Pitt mentions that a story he just told doesn’t have a happy ending because it’s not an American story, it’s an Irish one. I’ll let you find out for yourself which kind of story this film is, but the ending disappointed me. An IRA commander (Pitt) goes undercover in the U.S., living with a cop (Harrison Ford) and his idyllic, Irish-American family while trying to conclude an arms deal. There’s plenty of great performances amidst the irony (wife Margaret Colin particularly shines), but the plot doesn’t go out with a bang.
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