I don’t make much of a secret of my fanboy-ish love for noir novelist Jim Thompson. And unlike a lot of the novelists I love, I’m always excited to see a new Thompson adaptation in the works. His work has a quality that lends itself quite well to film. Even the failed adaptations of his work, and there are many, often turn out to be interesting in some fashion.
So I don’t even care that Jessica Alba is part of the new team adapting the seminal Thompson novel The Killer Inside Me. Because Casey Affleck is starring as Lou Ford, the Texas sheriff assumed to be a lazy, spineless nobody who is actually a cunning, sociopathic murderer. Ford kills a hooker and her wealthy john, then has to continue killing to bloster the frame he constructs for the crime(s). Alba plays a prostitute in the film, but she’s not likely to be the one that gets bumped off early, so don’t get your hopes up there.
In the wake of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Affleck is ideal casting. Lou Ford is quite similar to Robert Ford in many respects; now I have to dig out Savage Art, the Thompson biography, to see if there’s any mention of a relationship between the invented Lou and real Robert.
Michael Winterbottom is directing, which is…interesting. Off the top of my head, I feel like The Claim might be the closest film he’s made to this, at least in terms of tone. Oh, if only there was a logical reason to cast Peter Mullan in this film.
Because it’s Sunday, here’s some bonus content: the song ‘The Killer Inside Me’ by MC 900 Ft Jesus, with ludicrious lyrics inspired by Thompson’s book. Sort of. How long’s it been since you thought abut this guy?