Nicole Kidman’s new movie, Destroyer, will seem intimately familiar to film fans. You have seen the L.A. crime noir drama for decades from Point Blank to Chinatown to L.A. Confidential. And you have seen great men of cinema—Hackman, Nicholson, Denzel, William Hurt, and others—take on the role of the gritty, ambiguously crooked, and tough as nails cop. Destroyer is not necessarily destined to break into the top three ever for the genre, but it is destined for something perhaps more important. With her take-no-prisoners, physically and emotionally powerful performance, Kidman announced with conviction that leading ladies, too, can take on the role. And she nailed it. Sure, we have had femme fatales—Uma, Angelina, and Charlize. This is something slightly but importantly different.

From the moment the film opens, focused on Kidman’s tired, aging, bloodshot vision, you know you are in for an intimate if disturbing examination of a troubled woman. Her name is Detective Erin Bell, a washed-up Los Angeles homicide detective with baggage as dark and deep as those beneath her eyes. A dead body has turned up in the canal, announcing to Bell the return of Silas (Toby Kebbell), an enemy of her past. Determined to set right what once went wrong, Bell engages on a one woman wrecking ball revenge mission that takes her across Los Angeles in her vehicle, Gosling in Drive style, all the way through a fitting finale.

Destroyer, which just had its world premiere at the Telluride Film Festival, was directed by Karyn Kusama, whose previous, much less interesting work includes Aeon Flux and Jennifer’s Body. In Destroyer, she has graduated into the big leagues of serious, deeper film-making. She is helped immensely by moody cinematography and convincing makeup. But it is Kidman who steals the show from start to finish.

The story proceeds on two timelines. In one, we see a much younger Bell going undercover to catch an L.A. gang turned violent, led by the macabre and sadistic Silas. Her partner in this dangerous mission is FBI agent Chris (Sebastian Stan), who passes as her lover for the undercover mission. In the other, the present, we follow Bell as she tries to pin down Silas’ current whereabouts, slowly uncovering clues as to his location but also as to what happened between all of them all those years ago. The supporting cast includes an array of criminal elements, some morally worse than others, though none as impressive as Tatiana Maslany as Silas’ seductive and destructive girlfriend Petra.

As the two stories unfold in a twisted parallel, separate but inevitably intertwined, we are treated to all facets of Kidman’s tour-de-force transformations. She is a seductive angel (one of her career trademarks), a violent demon (the new note she hits in this film), and everything in between. She is a drunk, a failed mother, but always an un-repenting, un-relentless strong woman.

Destroyer’s plot appears, at first, to be for some reason misguided. It is not that the story is familiar and therefore unoriginal. L.A. noir crime films are like murder mystery novels. Sure, they may have many of the same repetitive elements, but the devil is in the details. It is about whodunit among this group of people. Rather, the problem with the plot in this film is that it seems to be trying to be cleverly ambiguous, to reveal itself in pieces, only to become extremely obvious and predictable.

Not so, it turns out. By the time the two hour run-time rushes to a close, the story comes together excitingly and surprisingly. Like the best of the best in this genre, the devil was in fact in the details—and the devils you think you know are not all that they seems.

So good is the way in which Kusama wraps up all of the elements, so logical all of the horrendous destruction that Bell inflicts upon herself given what happened to her, that you will forgive some questionable lyrical choices in a few key scenes, and look past what could be fairly described as clichéd poetry. It turns out that Kusama and, most importantly, Kidman, had a plan all along. Every note, every crevice, every frown, and every grunt out of Bell’s mouth has meaning and necessarily follows from the horrors of her past. Gun robberies, shoot-outs, and fist matches are all window dressing to something deeper.

Nicole Kidman is without question one of the greatest actors of our generation. She has never been one to shy away from unconventional, norm-defying stories or roles, either. But it is a sad reality of Hollywood that as even the best of women age, their opportunities dwindle, or at least narrow. In Destroyer, however, a vehicle that makes her a strong contender for the Best Actress Oscar, Kidman has achieved her biggest feat yet—to show us that no genre should be off limits.

Grade: A-

If you like what you read, follow us on Twitter @thesplashreport and @jdonbirnam and on Instagram @awards_predix and @splashreport

​​PLEASE FEEL FREE TO SHARE THIS POST ON YOUR FACEBOOK WALL AND WITH YOUR TWITTER FOLLOWERS! JUST HIT THE BUTTONS ON THE BOTTOM OF THIS PAGE.