Review: Nicole Kidman’s gritty transformation fuels twisty noir thriller ‘Destroyer’

In “Destroyer,” Nicole Kidman wears a face only a pulp-fiction fan – or Dashiell Hammett – could love.

With skeletal, strung-out features, the weathered eyes of a woman who’s definitely seen some stuff, and leathery skin that hasn’t felt a moisturizer in eons, Kidman gets one seriously hard-boiled makeover and is the best thing about the grimy, twisty crime thriller (★★★ out of four; rated R; in theaters Christmas Day in New York and Los Angeles, opens nationwide Jan. 25). While its narrative is unnecessarily complex and its story influences obvious, director Karyn Kusama (“The Invitation”) is mostly successful juggling a noir style, shifty denizens and shadowy dealings under L.A.’s bright sun.

Oscar watch! You’ll barely recognize Nicole Kidman in ‘Destroyer’

LAPD detective Erin Bell (Kidman) enters the scene of a homicide moving like the walking dead, and she’s more of a nuisance than a help to her fellow cops. (She also drinks a lot, doesn’t sleep, and is kind of a walking catastrophe.) The city’s latest murder features a dye-covered $100 bill and a body with a familiar tattoo, both of which mean the return of an old foe named Silas (Toby Kebbell) and memories of a heist gone tragically wrong 17 years earlier.

Flashbacks gradually reveal how Erin and her FBI partner Chris (Sebastian Stan) infiltrated Silas’ bank-robbing gang, an assignment that brought Erin and Chris together romantically but remains a source of tremendous guilt for the antiheroine. It’s that accountability Erin struggles with now as she pays visits to former criminal associates and assorted shady types, from a corrupt lawyer (Bradley Whitford) to a rich-girl drug addict (Tatiana Maslany), in order to shake loose information that will lead her to Silas.

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