Destroyer is Nicole Kidman’s reward for Aquaman. After slumming it in a crazy CGI spectacle for the vast mainstream audience, Kidman has been awarded with a juicy complex character to dive into. Destroyer lacks the OMGness of her last film, The Invitation, but it is still powerful nonetheless, anchored by Nicole Kidman’s performance as a beat cop with a score to settle.
After getting notified of a murder of an unknown person, detective Erin Bell (Kidman) receives an envelope from a tainted hundred dollar bill similar to the one at the crime scene. This makes Bell realize that previous gang leader Silas (Toby Kebbell) is back making moves, forcing Bell to take the case. See, Bell and partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) had previously infiltrated the gang led by Silas and Petra (Tatiana Maslany). Things went bad between Erin and Silas, forcing Erin to take the case and confront the past that’s come to define her, in spite of her daughter Shelby (Jane Pettyjohn) and ex Ethan (Scoot McNairy).
Albus Dumbledore once told Harry Potter that our choices determine who we are. Destroyer is about two crucial choices that comes to define Erin Bell’s life: one she makes, and one Chris makes. The movie smartly bisects Erin’s life pre and post choice, as we see how one critical choice can completely change your life. Early on, she’s not quite a wide eyed innocent, but she lives by her sense of duty to her mission with Chris. There’s an air of joy and zest for living that grows more messy as we approach her life altering moment. This is juxtaposed jarringly with the present, where Erin feels like a dead person walking. And yet…she’s still walking, but for what purpose. For Erin, her life has devolved into a singular purpose….this case. Just this case. So much so that she has to be reminded of her daughter’s shenanigans by Ethan, and only tries to stop them through the methods she’s using for her cases. Kusama slowly works us to the dual climaxes of the two time periods, explaining how Erin got to where she is, and explaining who she is at the same time. So when she bursts headlong into a bank robbery, we completely understand why she would do that, while thrilling us at the same time.
It certainly helps when Nicole Kidman is headlining your movie. Haircuts aside, Kidman has to essentially create 2 different Erins based on the time period we’re in, and the talented thespian is more than up to the task. As young Erin, Kidman imbues the character with more effervescence and warmth, as you can see with her wide eyed reactions to people she cares about being put into troubling situations. However, it’s older Erin where Kidman shines…darkest I guess? There’s a grizzled, weariness Kidman projects onto wiser Erin, as if she’s carrying the weight of her past decisions with her at all times. There’s also less humanity and more irritable bite to her performance, as she’s clearly not interested in relationships anymore, just her mission.
Destroyer in the past might have been about how a woman was destroyed by a traumatizing incident inflicted upon her. With this smart script and Karyn Kusama’s direction, Destroyer is about a woman’s consequences for her own decisions, and how she chooses to take responsibility for them. This Nicole Kidman would have murdered Aquaman and gotten that trident for herself. Now THAT would’ve been a hell of a twist!