Mike Souder (Sam Worthington) and Brian Heigh (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), detectives in the tiny Texas town of Texas City, try to nab a serial killer who’s been dumping the bodies of young women in an oily marsh the locals have dubbed “The Killing Fields.”

CRITIQUE

Let’s go ahead and get one thing out of the way: Texas Killing Fields (the place is real but the plot isn’t) was directed by Ami Canaan Mann, whose father just so happens to be Michael Mann. Every interview Mann did at the time of this movie’s very limited, very brief theatrical run made mention of this, as did every review from that time. Some critics even went so far as to compare Mann’s work to that of her father, and some of the negative ones (which is most of them) even suggested she should have allowed her old man to give her a hand.

That’s nonsense, unfair to the younger Mann in a number of ways. No one should go into this movie expecting a Michael Mann flick. Sure, he’s one of the executive producers, but he also served in the same capacity on Band of the Hand, and nobody knocked Paul Michael Glaser for not relinquishing control. Okay, so maybe that’s a bad example, but still. Everyone should simply judge this movie based on the work of the people actively involved. Got it? Good.

So who’s to blame for the movie’s mediocrity? Writer Donald F. Ferrarone, for the most part. His script (his first, not surprisingly) is either too much or too little, depending on what the original intent was. I’m not sure if this was meant to be a moody thriller, a character study, or a combination of the two, but it doesn’t work on any of those levels. It meanders too much to be an on-the-level detective flick, and it’s too labored to be a probing look at two men caught up in a storm of violence and chaos. It’s not really about the case or the people involved in it, so it doesn’t quench any of the thirsts stories of this sort are designed to quench.

There’s not really a whole lot of story here, but the sheer number of characters involved makes it seem there is. That number is far too large for a movie that runs less than two hours. Although it’s not, the movie sort of plays like an adaptation of a novel that’s been cut down willy-nilly, all of the characters left in but backstory and character development removed. So what you get is the sense that characters are just wandering in for no reason, cluttering up the story and taking time away from the handful of characters who do actually matter and the plotlines that are actually important. This quite naturally leads to a bunch of plotlines that are left dangling when the end credits roll, and it’s almost impossible not to feel cheated.

Mann has said the ambiguities and dead ends in the story aren’t the result of sloppiness but are to give the movie an authentic feel, as most real-life police investigations of this nature aren’t as clean and neat as Hollywood would have you believe. I’m fine with that, but she and Ferrarone don’t earn the right to play things this way. They don’t give us enough of anything else to chew on to make us not care that everything doesn’t together or get resolved at the end.

Something like L.A. Confidential can get away with that, as it actually is concerned with plot and character on a roughly equal basis, so you still feel satisfied when it’s over and not every question has been answered. Texas Killing Fields, however, is too thin and undernourished to pull that off. It’s not enough to know that Souder has anger issues, or that Heigh is shouldering so much Catholic guilt he makes Atlas look like an eighty-pound weakling; giving them one character trait doesn’t actually make them characters.

Red herrings abound here, but it’s obvious they are red herrings. It’s easy to spot who’s being brought in as a feint and who’s being kept in the background in hopes of surprising the audience. There’s nothing organic about the way the numerous suspects orbit the story, and it doesn’t come as a shock when the reveal comes. And that reveal leads to a climax that’s even more disappointing that what precedes it. It’s underwhelming in the extreme, low-key and staid. I think it’s meant to be inevitable, but it’s simply ho-hum.

This is Mann’s second feature (her first was some obscure indie released a decade ago), and while I don’t think the movie’s worth seeing, I hope it’s not her last. What I do hope is that she eventually gets a script that actually gives her a story worth telling. She’s quite good with actors; both Morgan and Worthington are good (I guess all the latter needed was a director who was concerned with more than effects or breaking his own records), as are Jessica Chastain (playing Worthington’s ex-wife, a detective in a neighboring jurisdiction) and (no surprise here) Chloë Grace Moretz (whose function in the story doesn’t require explanation).

The pacing is a little more languid than it needs to be, but Mann successfully conveys the oppressive nature of the setting. She’s also no slouch when it comes to taking a small moment and turning it into a visual hook. The first couple shots of the movie have absolutely nothing to do with what follows, but they’re arresting enough to make you think you’re in for something special. If only...         

THE VIDEO

The 2.40:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 25GB disc--is a good one, nothing more. It’s obviously dragged down a bit by the original photography, which falls victim to many of the same problems you find in modestly budgeted features shot with digital cameras. Blacks crush at times, and some minor digital noise is noticeable in more than a few scenes. The humid, sun-baked exteriors (although set in Texas, the movie was shot in Louisiana) have a soft, hazy look, which certainly complements the story but leads to some loss of detail and a slightly blown-out look. Contrast has also been jacked, with predictable results.

THE AUDIO

Lossless audio comes in the form of a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 track. I’m not sure why those two extra channels were required, as the movie’s sound mix makes very little use of the rear half of the soundstage. There’s a bit of atmosphere in some exteriors, and the obligatory chase scene throws some information to the surrounds, but everything else remains locked in the fronts. There’s not much in the way of low-end action. Some of the hushed dialogue is almost impossible to make out. Dickon Hinchliffe’s music (one of the best aspects of the movie) is given an excellent presentation. A Spanish mono track is also included; English SDH and Spanish subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The commentary by Ami Canaan Mann and Donald F. Ferrarone often seems like an attempt to add more import to the movie, as the participants spend an awful lot of time trying to explain what they’d hoped to accomplish (but didn’t).

The only other extra is the movie’s theatrical trailer (which is presented in high-def).

FINAL THOUGHTS