A killer's inside 2007's breakthrough actor

Filed under "Movies I'm now impatiently waiting on".....

Casey Affleck was, easily, one of my top performers of 2007. Gone Baby Gone was a great piece of moody investigation blues, and Affleck proved ten times more charismatic and attention-commandeering as a leading man than I'd ever guessed. Then came The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, a dense, quiet, arthouse-goes-Western dose of psychological drama that'll forever rest comfortably in my "how was this movie so overlooked" memory bank-vault, and Affleck chilled at that coward.



Big brother Ben has been demoted to "the other Affleck."

But the better-thesp Affleck hasn't had much going on since his Oscar nom for ...Robert Ford in this year's nobody-watched Oscar telecast. So the following announcement immediately drew my eyes and ears in:

Affleck has signed on to star in The Killer Inside Me, based on a 1952 classic noir by beloved author Jim Thompson that some say must've inspired Bret Easton Ellis' killer-yuppie novel American Psycho. He'll play the main character, " an amiable small-town Texas lawman wrestling with a dark secret, demonstrated through increasingly sociopathic actions." Upon deeper investigation, these "actions" are the brutally-violent murdering of townsfolk, namely prostitutes.



Dude was great playing "disturbed man harboring homicidal tendencies" as Robert Ford, so this sounds like a great fit. Props awarded to the casting crew and Killer Inside Me director Michael Winterbottom for passing by more prestigious names for Casey A. This one's high on my to-watch front, now. No question.

About to buy Jim Thompson's original book after work today, in fact. It's not a game. This story sounds right up my dark, seedy fictional alley. Was going to decide on-spot between Jack Ketchum's The Girl Next Door and Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road, but those may have to fall back momentarily.

Besides, Jessica Alba's also down for Killer Inside Me as a prostitute, and there's no denying the potential greatness that exists in Alba hoping for acting cred through portraying a hooker. It's like, she's finally realizing where her true talents reside: her blazer of a body and melter of a mug. "Respected actress" she's not. Though, something like Killer Inside Me seems like a decent step in the right direction.

How about a shot from my favorite performance of her's (next to the winning Sin City, of course)?



Yes, I saw Honey in a theater. With a friend, named Ben. What? That shit came out at the height of my once-burning passion for Alba (Idle Hands and Dark Angel had me soaring in lust).

She's a bad, bad actress. Won't be able to keep up with Affleck in pure "batshit crazy" mode. Throw some skimpy olden-times garb on her, though, and I won't give two shits. I'm shallow like that.