Almost 10 years after WILD TALES, Argentinian director Damián Szifron has made his next feature and his English-speaking debut: CATCH THE KILLER was initially supposed to be called “Misanthrope,“ - and it’s hard to tell how both titles could fit this slick police thriller. Eleanor (Shailene Woodley) is a young patrolwoman in the Baltimore Police Department who is plagued by suicidal thoughts. When a sniper runs amok on New Year’s Eve, she is on duty. She helps a family, is retraumatized – and is discovered by FBI lead investigator Lammark (Ben Mendelsohn). From his perspective, she is predestined to hunt down a disturbed criminal – due to her dark tendencies, she is capable of thinking like him. He recruits her for his internal team in order to hunt down the murderer in a chase filled with trials and errors.

CATCH THE KILLER sees itself a commentary on the social conditions that lead to the deeply US phenomenon of mass shooting. The film also wants to operate like a typical thriller, showing real police and how the power structures between the executive and legislative institutions work. Both of these goals aren’t quite met: while the psycho-social track is reduced to the simple “hurt people hurt people,“ there isn’t enough courage to show something realistic. When Eleanor is hired to be an FBI counselor in no time and finds herself sitting on a supervisory board a few days later, or searching a garbage dump by hand one day and being flown in by helicopter the next – it is more likely to confirm the American Dream than reveal its lies. Telling a heroine’s tale was ultimately more important that shedding light on the US administration.

Christopher Suss

Translation: Elinor Lewy