Jessica Shepard (Ashley Judd) is an up and coming San Francisco police inspector after catching a killer. Her mentor John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson) is the commissioner who is also her father's former police partner. She has a dark sexual side and her psychiatrist Dr. Melvin Frank (David Strathairn) wants to dig into her father's series of killings including her mother and himself. Her ex-partner and lover Jimmy Schmidt (Mark Pellegrino) is possessive of her. She get promoted into Homicide with new partner Mike Delmarco (Andy García). She faces a hostile group of detectives. Then she starts blacking out and losing time. Her sexual flings starts getting murdered by a serial killer.It starts as an OK creepy noirish dark vibe. It pushes too hard sometimes but it's not bad. First off, she shouldn't be passing out like she's been drugged. It takes away the possibility that she is actually the one doing the killing. There is a paranoia with that possibility that is completely missing. The audience assumes that she's not the killer. The movie would be better without that assumption. Then the twisty thriller lacks the execution. It's all dark. The mystery isn't there. None of the characters are compelling. It's a thriller without thrills.

This one is a bit muddled and mundane. There isn't much here that is remarkable or even interesting for that matter. The obvious indulgences such as drinking then passing out unawares and waking up with murder at hand, then drinking again and again. Not likely behavior from an intelligent, albeit confused, inspector.There seems to be a lack of persona to the people who populate this anemic, yet somehow withstanding, crime film that is neither totally suspenseful or very intelligent. There is a lack of energy in the unfolding and everyone seems rather bored by it all.The movie has enough superficial surroundings to glide through a mystery and the cast delivers enough professionalism to this pedestrian picture, and it is entertaining enough. But the mediocrity here meanders and one is left with a rather unfeeling resolve and more confusion than conviction.

This is a superb, and, yes, twisted, thriller. It features a remarkable central performance by Ashley Judd as a young female police inspector in San Francisco. (The film was shot entirely on location there, which makes for a very good effect indeed, as what urban location in America is more picturesque than the Bay Area? We also gets lots of amusing shots of the seals basking and squawking, and we even see one of them inspecting a dead body in the Bay.) Ashley Judd has deep psychological problems in this film, as her parents mysteriously died when she was six, and she is haunted by it. When she returns home in the evenings, she appears to drink far too much and keeps passing out. In these scenes she is eerily convincing. She certainly knows how to let her eyes go out of focus in a closeup. She must have practiced in front of a mirror for weeks. She has the perfect mixture of cute little daughter with a girlish smile and tough police woman with a gun on her hip. She provides us with a real character study-and-a-half. Her partner in homicide is played by Andy Garcia with a rather soft and womanish manner, which contrasts equally perfectly with Judd's assumption of masculine manners as she swaggers about being tough, but then lapses into tears and he comforts her like a girlfriend would do. Constantly in the background is the Commissioner, played excellently by Samuel J. Jackson, who had been her father's partner in the police force and has raised her as an orphan since her parents died. Judd keeps a box of mementos with a teddy bear (which she kisses) and mixed in with her childish remnants are grisly police file photos of her murdered father, which she studies obsessively night after night looking for a clue as to what really happened, for the official story is that he killed his wife and then committed suicide. But she never really accepts this, and as the story progresses, we can see why. Judd is so screwed up psychologically that she goes around picking up strangers in bars and having one night stands with them, but then one by one they start getting murdered. She ends up investigating their deaths with herself as a suspect in their killings! She begins to get doubts about herself and think that maybe she is killing these men but not realizing it. So this film turns very much into a psychological drama, which intensifies the suspense. Is she after all a dual personality case? Is she passing out and then going and killing people during her blackouts? Or is somebody else doing this? If so, is it to frame her, is it an act of obsession, and who knows who they all are anyway? After all, she only saw most of the men once. (They are by the way all equally horrible creeps who hang around in bars being losers, so it is hard to retain sympathy for the Judd character in light of her bad taste and crazy behaviour patterns.) Naturally I cannot reveal the answer to this strange tale, but it certainly has a twist and a half. The cinematography by Peter Deming (who excelled himself in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, 2001, see my review, and LOST HIGHWAY, 1997) is excellent, especially the opening shots with the flying birds reflected in Ashley Judd's eyes as a man holds a knife to her throat. The direction by Philip Kaufman is superb as well. He was director of THE RIGHT STUFF (1983), the remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS (1978) and THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (1988). He is currently making a movie about Ernest Hemingway's romance with his third wife, Martha Gelhorn, with Nicole Kidman as Gelhorn. I have to say that everything started to go wrong for Hem when he left his first wife, but that was partly because she lost the manuscript of his first novel and he could never forgive her. He then fell into the clutches of two man-eaters, first the monstrous Pauline Pfeiffer, and then that Gelhorn person. After that, there was not much left of him, and he resembled the big fish caught by Spencer Tracy in THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA (1958), which by the time it was beached was only a skeleton, having been devoured by sharks en route. However, we are straying from TWISTED, which no one should really do, as it needs to be watched all the way through, because it is so ingenious.

Twisted is yet another in a long and overly familiar line of whodunnits featuring a cop with issues being framed for some killings. This plot is fast becoming Hollywood's most unoriginal and over-used cliché. With a strong cast and a reliable director at the helm (Philip Kaufman is the director behind movies like The Unbearable Lightness Of Being and Quills), I at least expected some new angles. You'd think Kaufman of all people would try to eschew the usual predictable plot developments… but no! What we have here is a thriller as unoriginal, cliché-ridden and thoroughly routine as can be.Ace San Francisco lady cop Jessica Shepard (Ashley Judd) is promoted to the homicide department and paired with a new partner, Mike Delmarco (Andy Garcia). Life should be rosy… except that Jessica has a troubled past. Her father – also a cop – cracked up many years previously and went on a killing spree, eventually taking his own life but not before murdering her mother. Jessica is battling with serious alcohol addiction, and is under therapy with Dr. Frank (David Strathairn) to help her deal with deep-rooted psychological fears. She also has her protector and mentor John Mills (Samuel L. Jackson) to keep her on the straight and narrow – he was her father's old police partner, and is now Commissioner of Police. Things start getting awkward for Jessica when a series of corpses turn up around San Francisco. Each new victim is one of Jessica's ex-lovers, and it isn't long before her own colleagues begin to suspect that she may be involved in the killings – maybe even that she is the murderer. As the corpses mount, Jessica herself fears that she may not be innocent. She must control her fragile emotional state long enough to solve the killings… The only enjoyment to be had from the film is in guessing the identity of the true killer. There's certainly little else to get excited about. The script is dull and pedestrian, the actors look generally bored, the film is shot with little visual panache and has the look of an inflated TV movie. Much of the dialogue is laughable, and even the San Francisco setting isn't used to any great effect (if you're watching this because you like 'Frisco you'd be better sticking with Bullitt or Dirty Harry!) The eventual solution when it comes is guessable in spite of the various red herrings, but as grand denouements go it is also rather unconvincing and improbable. Overall, it is hard to believe that so much talent was ever attracted to this project. The director and the actors surely suspected from early on that they were onto a turkey?!? If you're addicted to the whole "troubled-cop-being-framed" sub-genre you might want to check it out, but others should beware. You can definitely find better things to do with your time!