Texas Killing Fields Movie Review

Texas Killing Fields (2011)

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Written by: Don Ferrarone
Directed by: Ami Canaan Mann
Starring: Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chloë Grace Moretz, Jessica Chastain, Jason Clarke, Annabeth Gish, Stephen Graham
Rated: R
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Plot
In the Texas bayous, a local homicide detective teams up with a cop from New York City to investigate a series of unsolved murders.

Verdict
The longer this continues, the worse it gets. It starts out as a rather typical cop procedural, but it fabricates twists and connections, with an ending that feels like it was ad-libbed. Don't let the level of talent fool you, the writing slips soon after the start, completely tumbling by the end.
Skip it.

Review
This jumps right into it with two cops on a murder scene in small town Texas. Mike Souder (Sam Worthington) is the hothead with Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as the empathetic cop. I assumed they would be butting heads, but not as much as expected. This throws a lot of characters at us early on, giving them enough screen time so we know they're important. It feels like the movie is tipping their hand. The stereotypical bad guy, Rule (Jason Clarke) seems like he's in the movie only to pad time and to add another plausible suspect. I appreciate the movie showed us the character early so when his name was mentioned we knew who he was, but I knew he's be a bigger character with how much we saw of him.

Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan play Mike Souder and Brian Heigh

The cops seem almost like vigilantes. They don't appear to answer to any kind of captain. They were told not to cross county or district lines and do so with no thought or repercussions. Two suspects open fire on civilians and cops, and I couldn't figure out why as the cops only had circumstantial evidence that ending up pertinent to nothing.

Jason Clarke and Jon Eyez play Rule and Levon

This movie tries to do a lot. There's a surprise just for the sake of it, and you can't trace it because it comes out of nowhere. This would have been serviceable if it just stick to solving a case. Instead this manufacturers twists and creates drama out of nothing. This just gets worse. The conclusion is a jumble, that doesn't matter because by that point I didn't care. I had no trust in this movie to deliver anything sensible.