Two new films aim to break the cinematic dominance of the male cop, whose taciturn, violence-prone profiles have been off limits to women for decades

The surprising presence of two thrillers at the Toronto film festival featuring women in the lead role of detective underlines how rare such films are. Destroyer and Out of Blue represent a pair of refreshing entries to a male-dominated genre. But this shortage isn’t just a symptom of good old-fashioned Hollywood sexism – it also seems to have its roots in a deeper, more complex apprehension.

The movie detective is so popular because it’s a character trope centred on transgressions – try to count them, and you’ll soon note many more bad cops than good ones. It excites us to see a character do things society does not allow; when they can justify this violence with claims of a higher purpose – justice, for instance, or protecting innocent people – it is exhilarating. Films about bad cops often push this logic to its breaking point, forcing us to wonder if the end really justifies the means.

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In Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callahan successfully stops some bank robbers from fleeing the scene of the crime, but not without killing two of them in the process. We can judge and reprimand him for those deaths – and for risking the lives of civilians by opening fire in public – but also absolve him because he put his life on the line. At the end of the day, he did his job, and saved innocent lives. The character is so alluring precisely because of this fragile sliver of righteousness.

Similarly in Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer, washed-up detective Erin Bell (Nicole Kidman) does not hesitate to start shooting at bank robbers, endangering everyone in the building. Seeing a woman in the role of the jaded and aggressive cop who refuses to play by the book still feels startling – Sandra Bullock’s turn in Murder by Numbers as a promiscuous detective with a distaste for authority comes to mind, but that was 16 years ago.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Feeling lucky … Clint Eastwood’s Harry Callaghan. Photograph: Sportsphoto Ltd/Allstar

And when a badass female detective does appear, she will tend to differ in one key way from her male peers: 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. Elisabeth Moss’s cop in the TV series Top of the Lake, for example, attacks a man with a glass bottle not out of bloody-minded vigilantism but because he was one of her rapists. In Out of Blue Patricia Clarkson’s aloof toughness is linked to an ordeal from her childhood.

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. But she remains an outlier.

Why this need to justify female detectives’ violent impulses? Besides the fact that it is another way of stripping female characters of agency – instead of acting on their environment, they are reacting to it – this tendency seems to go hand-in-hand with an anxiety around motherhood. Protection through violence and maternal affection are two concepts at odds with each other, and which Hollywood often puts together for thrilling effect – usually in the story of a mother’s vendetta. In Kidnap, Halle Berry becomes an action hero in a split second, running after the criminals who have her son. In Peppermint, Jennifer Garner turns into a killing machine after the murders of her husband and daughter. Uma Thurman’s Bride vows to Kill Bill, the man responsible for the death of her unborn child.

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In other cases, the maternal instinct kicks in as a plot twist. Taraji P Henson’s Proud Mary is a hitwoman who isn’t so proud and detached after all, becoming the protector of a young boy after she kills his father. Kathleen Turner’s tough private investigator VI Warshawski finds herself befriending the daughter of her murdered boyfriend.

By contrast, the parental instincts of male detectives tends to be immaterial. When they are fathers, they are usually held to much lower standards of parenthood than their female counterparts. In Heat, Al Pacino’s Lt Vincent Hanna is too busy chasing after bank robbers to participate much in family life. Yet his shortcomings are forgotten when he dramatically saves the young step-daughter who has attempted suicide. That his emotional neglect may have played a part in the girl’s desperation and that his absence directly led to her mother spending the evening with another man is conveniently forgotten.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tough ... Kathleen Turner as VI Warshawski. Photograph: Channel 5

Female detectives rarely have it so easy – although Prime Suspect has the merit of standing by Helen Mirren’s Jane Tennison even once she “fails” as a wife and mother. When her husband leaves her because she is too obsessed with her work, the problem clearly isn’t her dedication but his sexist expectations. In Out of Blue, Patricia Clarkson’s Mike Hoolihan seems perfectly happy living alone with her cat (even if motherhood is central to her reckoning with the past). Neither need to be redeemed by maternal principles.

Destroyer pushes this feminist idea to an almost uncomfortable extreme. Kidman’s hard-boiled detective isn’t too busy to be a good, nurturing mother. Rather, she simply fails at being one. She loves her daughter and has the skills to protect her, but she cannot take care of her in the day-to-day. It’s in her character; she is the Destroyer. Feminism isn’t just about letting women be bad – it is also about accepting that they can be bad mothers.

•Destroyer screens at the London film festival on 14 October and is released in the US on Christmas day. Out of Blue screens at the London film festival on 13 October.