Director Michael Winterbottom, a prolific jack-of-all-trades in the Steven Soderbergh mold, has dabbled in genres as varied as the Western ( The Claim), the sci-fi thriller ( Code 46), the docudrama ( The Road To Guantanamo, A Mighty Heart) and the musical biopic ( 24 Hour Party People). While there's no better choice than Affleck to play the taciturn killer of the title, it's sadly one of the few choices the movie gets right. It's the ideal role for Affleck, who conveys the chilling ease with which a sociopath can slip in and out of character, with only a lingering Cheshire cat grin as evidence that he's done something wrong and gotten away with it. With only the slightest shift in inflection, Affleck can play the quietly compassionate, street-smart private eye in Gone Baby Gone or the opportunistic simpleton who guns down a legend in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford.īased on Jim Thompson's seminal first-person crime novel, The Killer Inside Me casts Affleck as a small-town deputy in 1950s West Texas, a man who cuts a clean figure but harbors a penchant for boundless savagery outside the public eye. Though lean and handsome like his older brother Ben, Casey Affleck is in every way the opposite of his more famous sibling: Laconic and mysterious where Ben is open and ingratiating, he tends to speak in a low drawl that suggests either a modest, retiring personality or someone who tucks dark secrets behind an impassive demeanor.

The killer inside me book review