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As Destroyer tries to humanize Bell’s plight, it conversely becomes more false, culminating with an ending so dire and obvious that one tends to forget it’s a Memento-sized rip off of better material.

Overall, something doesn’t gel, and while the film looks and feels stylish and distinctive—Julie Kirkwood’s atmospherically downbeat city photography, Theodore Shapiro’s stark, ominous string score—the film seems too much in thrall to its overcast mood, bringing home the point that its characters are living in an earthly hell.

Kidman does a lot of interesting things with Erin, in particular with her voice, which rarely rises above a near-whisper. You have to lean in to even hear her. Kidman's intuition about the voice is spot on. This is a character with no excess energy, no resilience, nothing to call upon. But the problem is she doesn't just "look bad" in "Destroyer." She looks like a zombie staggering out of a mausoleum.

At once undercooked and overwrought, this dreary slog through a '70s-style crime thriller proves only that having the chops to direct like the boys do is not enough, and altogether too much.

[James Jordan’s big scene] is an example of where Kusama’s insistence on pushing the limits of good taste either backfires or goes supernova: It’s grotesque, uncomfortable, funny, and, given the script’s not-so-buried subtexts about regret, revenge, and exploitation, as thematically on point as it is off-putting.

Kusama is still figuring out how to balance form and pulp, but she has a singular unapologetic idea about what women can and cannot do onscreen, one she lets rip with verve and her superbly unbound star.

Flamboyantly deglammed, Kidman’s face plunges audiences into deepest distraction. Her countenance signals thematic discord. The film confuses abjectifying makeup artistry with audacity.

Frankly, it’s a bit much, with the camera and editing continually underscoring the grisly externals of Kidman’s performance. This aggressive hard sell not only misserves an actress whose efforts come off looking strenuous, but it stands at odds with the script’s sidewinding construction.

While the wayward methods of Dirty Harry and the rest are accepted as simple character trait, a female detective’s rebellious attitude often stems from some past trauma. . . . In that regard, Kidman’s cop in Destroyer represents a leap forward. “Don’t make excuses for what you want. It’s weak,” she says, and the realisation that she behaved as she did simply because she wanted to is chilling.

The movie works, in great part because the director Karyn Kusama, best known for her indie breakout “Girlfight,” commits to the material’s malice and keeps sentimentalism in check as fiercely as her hardworking star.

Intricately written, superbly shot, and at least 20 minutes too long (another Michael Mann connection!) Destroyer doesn’t quite ennoble the prestige-genre model it aspires to, but it doesn’t disgrace it, either, and the same can be said for Kidman’s acting, which gives off some of the signals of a stunt but gradually accrues the force and dimension of a major performance.