DESTROYER

Name: DESTROYER
Item: DESTROYER
Author: Admin

"Depressing Crime Thriller"

Family Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

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What You Need To Know:

DESTROYER is a dark crime thriller starring Nicole Kidman as Erin Bell, a female LAPD detective hunting a vicious bank robber who reappears 16 years after a notorious robbery. As Detective Bell tracks the bank robber and his new gang, flashbacks reveal that she and a male detective went undercover 16 years ago to stop the leader’s old gang. They fell in love while undercover, but the male detective died. So, the question is, is Bell now out for justice or revenge?

DESTROYER has a couple unexpected twists that almost totally change the viewer’s perspective on Detective Bell, and her motives and actions. Nicole Kidman does a good job as the beleaguered detective, but she can’t overcome all the flashbacks in the movie, which undercut her character’s development. The flashbacks also undercut the story’s cohesion. Even worse, the filmmakers give moviegoers a pretty depressing scenario. Ultimately, DESTROYER isn’t a very good crime thriller. Also, it has constant foul language and a disgusting lewd scene. Both add nothing to the story. Moviegoers aren’t going to watch a depressing crime thriller like DESTROYER.

Content:

(HH, C, LLL, VV, SS, AA, DD, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Bleak humanist worldview about a woman who tries to fix a problem she helped create, but her solutions aren’t very redemptive, plus a scene is set in a church briefly;

Foul Language:

181 obscenities, 10 strong profanities, one light profanity, two obscene gestures, and woman gets sick and vomits after being hit in stomach;

Violence:

Strong, sometimes intense violence includes gun battle between cops and bank robbers, a man is shot in the stomach, and the shooter then apparently finishes him off (you don’t see the second shot enter the dead man), bank teller crouches behind a counter, and robber fires at her from over the counter apparently killing her, people beaten up, female detective fights female suspect, woman uses gun to beat up a lying suspect who had her beaten up, man shot dead point blank, villain goads a weak man to play Russian Roulette with a loaded gun, bank robbers threaten people during two bank robberies;

Sex:

Female detective does a crude sexual favor for a suspect to get information from him, an older man in his twenties dates a rebellious 16-year-old girl, and there’s implied fornication between adults and an unwed pregnancy;

Nudity:

No nudity;

Alcohol Use:

Alcohol use and drunkenness;

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Smoking and man snorts cocaine in one scene; and,

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Corruption, rebellious teenage daughter, bank robbery, stealing.

More Detail:

DESTROYER is a dark crime thriller starring Nicole Kidman as a female LAPD detective hunting down a vicious bank robber who reappears 16 years after a notorious robbery that drastically changed the detective’s own life. DESTROYER has a couple unexpected plot twists that make the viewer examine everything from a different perspective, but it’s bogged down by too many flashbacks, constant foul language, a disgusting lewd scene, and a depressing scenario that’s not very entertaining.

The movie opens with haggard-looking LAPD Detective Erin Bell showing up at the murder scene of an unknown white gang member. The murder is out of her jurisdiction, but she starts investigating it anyway, because the murder has the handiwork of a vicious bank robber named Silas. As Bell searches for Silas, flashbacks reveal that 16 years ago Bell and a male detective named Chris went undercover to infiltrate a white bank robbery gang led by Silas out of San Bernardino. Bell and Chris fell in love while undercover, but Chris ended up dead. So, the question is, is Bell out for justice or revenge?

DESTROYER has a couple unexpected twists that almost totally change the viewer’s perspective on Detective Bell, and her motives and actions. The twists also involve her strained relationship with her 16-year-old daughter. Though Nicole Kidman does a good job as the beleaguered detective, she can’t overcome all the flashbacks in the movie, which undercut her character’s development, not to mention the story’s cohesion. Even worse, though, the filmmakers leave viewers with a pretty depressing scenario. They should have paid more attention on giving viewers a more entertaining movie.

Ultimately, DESTROYER isn’t a very good crime thriller. It’s also not a very good police procedural. In addition, it has constant foul language and a disgusting lewd scene. Both add nothing to the story.

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Quality:

- Content: -3