This was very controversial when it came out owing to a scene where a woman is beaten to a pulp. It was a difficult scene for me to watch, and I winced as I watched the punches land right in her face one after another. I had thought that the opening scene with Lou's beating Joyce with a belt on the arse was the scene, but it turned out that worse was to come.
The start of the film is brilliant. You hear Lou's charming narrative about the importance of manners in Texas just before his actions in Joyce's house reveal that he is not a clean cop. The alternation between his quiet life as a copper in a town with no crime and a sadist who burns cigarettes onto beggers keeps you interested. The other police officers are not entirely honest either, but they don't kill anyone. You have to pay close attention to understand Lou's motives for killing Mike and trying to kill Joyce. This was originally a novel and a lot of information is squashed into the first half-hour. The pace slows right down after Lou kills Mike, and the rest of the film is dedicated to suspense as you wonder whether Lou will get caught or not. He is cold and calculating as he covers for himself. When he realises that the game is up, he makes sure that he takes everyone down with him. Lou is a scarey character: he shows little remorse for his killings and is able to stay one step ahead of the game. He may not win in the end, but he doesn't lose either.
The film is very uneven. As a Guardian journalist pointed out, it is odd how they show Joyce's beating in zoomed-in detail but then Johnnie Papas hangs himself off camera. I got bored in places and engrossed in others. It gets 6/10 from me. It lacks an emotional dimension to the main character. You see his strategy in protecting himself as if he's playing a game of chess, but he has none of the charisma that other great cinema villains have.
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