jpwiggins Spoiler Alert : A detective who does not reveal she slept with both victims would be fired or at least severely reprimanded. I think I might be blacking out and killing people when I drink, but that's not reason enough to stop drinking. And although this happens in so many shows, no cop let's the murderer pull their gun out without pulling their trigger (even in the arm).

Predrag This suspense thriller features Jessica Shepard (Ashley Judd) attending a celebratory party due to her promotion to the rank of inspector and transfer to the homicide department. We are thus introduced to various characters including John Mills (Samuel L Jackson) as her mentor after the death of her father, Jimmy Schmidt (Mark Pellegrino) as her ex lover and a secretive stranger at the bar. After leaving the party she heads to a bar where she picks up a stranger. At work she attends her first homicide with her new partner Mike Delmarco (Andy García) and it transpires the deceased is a former one-night stand of hers. As the bodies of her ex lovers pile up she soon falls under suspicion, especially from one of her new colleagues. Her drinking problem grows and she begins to black out for increasingly long periods, doubting her own sanity. Is she the killer-inheriting the tendencies from her serial killer dad, perhaps it's ex Jimmy who takes his frustration on those that have replaced him, is it the new partner who obviously has a crush on her or is it one of her colleagues with their own agenda.All gave strong performances. There are not very many women out there that can give great performances without using fake long hair and lots of cleavage. Well, Ashley Judd can. The tension built between all three characters was fabulous and some good performances from the supporting cast. The atmosphere of the famous Bay area location of San Francisco was well shot, almost reminiscent of the old Streets of San Francisco and Macmillan and Wife but with a much more interesting plot and better acting.Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Desertman84 Twisted is a thriller film that stars Ashley Judd,plays a San Francisco homicide detective who is her own prime suspect in an ongoing serial murder case, in which all of the victims are men she recently slept with. Samuel L. Jackson and Andy García co-stars. It was written by Sarah Thorp and directed by Philip Kaufman.Having solved a high profile case involving a serial killer, Jessica Shepard is a rising officer in the San Francisco Police Department. She is transferred to the Homicide division and promoted to the rank of Inspector Also,she works under the jurisdiction of the man who raised her as his daughter, police Commissioner Mills. While investigating a serial murder case, Jessica discovers that all of the victims are men whom she's recently been in bed with. Complicating matters are her bitter ex-boyfriend, her very curious therapist and her odd-behaving new partner Mike Delmarco.Three more murders follow, all of whom have had relationships with her.Then,she begins to experience a mental breakdown, blacking out for increasingly long periods of time. Her father, a police patrolman, had gone on a killing spree back in the 1970's and then murdered her mother. She begins to fear that she has the same violent tendencies and that she has been committing murder in her disorganized state.Twisted has a preposterous screenplay, and with no apparent interest in the proceedings.Worse,Kaufman allows Judd to look silly, Garcia to overact, and the whole movie to unfold in murky darkness and dimly lit rooms.It is a movie only a screenplay, and with no apparent interest in the proceedings, director Philip Kaufman (The Right Stuff) allows Judd to look silly, Garcia to overact, and the whole movie to unfold in murky darkness and dimly lit rooms.It is a thriller only a misogynist could love since it was formulaic and clichéd at best.

robert-temple-1 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.