Copycat
This is a very good thriller that wants to be a sitcom? A serious version of Scream for the serial killer genre (with true crime!). It’s so intense most of the time, but then defuses that tension with almost comedy. I don’t think this is really intended.
This is really well written, and provides a new template for the female police detective that is not Fargo. MJ is also very polite when “asking” things, but with doe eyes, almost begging forcefully. She can also shoot the wings off a fly, but doesn’t brag about it or anything.
The core plot is a love square: MJ the police detective dumped some co-worker for being a jealous prick, and is developing a relationship with another, much more shy, young, and overall nice guy. The jilted lover hates his guts, of course. That shy dude is so bang-able, their prime witness and her gay friend get all thirsty for him.
The prime witness didn’t really witnessed anything, she is a psychologist focused on serial killers, some millionaire hermit that doesn’t leave the house not even 2 metres to pickup the newspaper. Her agoraphobia comes from the fact that during one of her lecture halls, she was nearly killed by one of the subjects of her book, some absolute nutter.
It seems a copycat killer is on the lose in San Francisco, killing people by mimicking the MO of famous serial killers, up to the finest details. We’re talking the classics: John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, the Son of Sam. The police chief was on the Zodiac team, which didn’t catch anyone, so they are out of their depth.
The suspense remains for a while, until we learn the guy is some privileged white dude working as a lab technician. He just does it of his own volition, for the infamy and “inglory”. Targeting the doctor is just turning it to eleven. He goes on a spree pretty much unchecked and without clues.
Out of freaking nowhere, during a big roundup of some Chinatown crime syndicate or something, the jilted dude forgets to lock a drawer and the bang-able dude is taken hostage, and while our protagonist has the chance to practice her marksman skill successfully, the nubile boy still gets killed. The jilted dude is hit pretty hard, he seems genuinely distraught, but our protagonist consoles him. The jilted guy still loves her, but he can see she had the hots for the poor kid.
Our protagonist tries to resign even, but the boss won’t wreck his whole team at once. She still has some work saving the prime witness from the copycat killer, in the end. Marksmanship upgraded, by spraying bullets like her dead lover.
An extremely high cosmopolitrometer setting, one of the killer has this southern drawl, I’ll be damned if it’s not some mockery of them rube hillbillies. Should have talked about squealing like piggies, Deliverance-style.
Holly Hunter kicks ass as the protagonist, and Sigourney Weaver is the anti-Ripley. Dermot Mulroney as the heartthrob, just great casting all around.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.