Twisted

This article was published on 03.11.04.

A San Francisco homicide inspector (Ashley Judd) investigates a series of murders in which all the victims are men she recently slept with; it’s a disconcerting coincidence—especially because she’s a blackout drunk who can’t account for her whereabouts during any of the killings. Out of respect for director Philip Kaufman’s achievements (The Right Stuff and The Unbearable Lightness of Being), we can forgive him for this stinker, but writer Sarah Thorp has no such reservoir of good will—her script teems with clichés, howlers and plot holes dredged up from other cop movies; it wouldn’t pass a junior-college screenwriting class. The solution to the “mystery” is obvious 30 seconds after the culprit’s first appearance. Meanwhile, Judd, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia and David Strathairn all are wasted.