Dennis Harvey Film Critic In 2014, Argentine writer-director Damian Szifron made a considerable splash with “Wild Tales.” The Oscar-nominated, Almodóvar-produced feature consisted of six escalatingly over-the-top stories that put a blackly comic slant on human behaviors at their worst, adding up to a flamboyantly enjoyable whole.
It’s surprising that it’s taken him nearly a decade to deliver his next feature, and more surprising still that it turns out to be his English-language debut “To Catch a Killer.” This Baltimore-set thriller, with Shailene Woodley as a cop helping FBI agent Ben Mendelsohn track down a mass shooter, is the screen equivalent of a page-turner: a solid investigative procedural that breaks no new ground, but delivers sufficient suspense, character interest, and action in confident fashion.
Nonetheless, it’s a curiously impersonal, straight-ahead genre piece for a writer-director who so assertively staked out his terrain as an auteur the last time around.
Vertical Entertainment is opening it on 500+ U.S. screens this Friday. Amidst fireworks noise, attendees at a penthouse New Year’s Eve party are slow to realize they’re under lethal attack by sniper fire, as are others in the surrounding area.
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