''Twisted'' is a 2004 American
psychological thriller
Psychological thriller is a genre combining the thriller and psychological fiction genres. It is commonly used to describe literature or films that deal with psychological narratives in a thriller or thrilling setting.
In terms of context and c ...
directed by
Philip Kaufman, written by Sarah Thorp, and starring
Ashley Judd
Ashley Judd (born Ashley Tyler Ciminella; April 19, 1968) is an American actress. She grew up in a family of performing artists: she is the daughter of the late country music singer Naomi Judd and the half-sister of country music singer Wynonna ...
,
Samuel L. Jackson
Samuel Leroy Jackson (born December 21, 1948) is an American actor and producer. One of the most widely recognized actors of his generation, the films in which he has appeared have collectively grossed over $27 billion worldwide, making him ...
, and
Andy García
Andrés Arturo García Menéndez (born April 12, 1956), known professionally as Andy García, is a Cuban-born American actor, director and musician. He first rose to prominence acting in Brian De Palma's ''The Untouchables'' (1987) alongside ...
. The film is set in
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
.
Plot
Having solved a high-profile case involving
serial killer
A serial killer is typically a person who murders three or more persons,A
*
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* with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant period of time between them. While most authorities set a threshold of three ...
Edmund Cutler that ended with her being taken hostage by Cutler but managing to overpower and arrest him, officer Jessica Shepard of the
San Francisco Police Department is transferred to the homicide division and promoted to the rank of
inspector. SFPD Commissioner John Mills, her foster father and her deceased father's former partner, also serves as her proud mentor. Shepard is an alcoholic and nymphomaniac, carrying the emotional burden of her father murdering some of her mother's extra-marital lovers, then Shepard's mother and himself.
When one of Shepard's former one-night stands is brutally murdered, Shepard and her new partner, Mike Delmarco, are assigned to the case. Shepard admits that she had slept with the victim yet remains assigned to the case. A few days later, another of Shepard's numerous one-night stands is murdered and soon the police come to the conclusion that the killer is stalking Shepard. At Mills' insistence, Shepard remains on the case to bait out the killer.
As investigations progress, Shepard keeps having alcoholic blackouts at night, having already had them on the nights of the two murders. She confides this to Mills, who encourages her to carry on.
Shepard discovers a third murder, Cutler's defense attorney Ray Porter, whom she also had previously had sex with, who had summoned her via note to meet him that morning. Inspector Dale Becker focuses the investigation on Shepard herself, due to Shepard's fleeting sexual relationship with the victims and her occasional flashes of violent behaviour in the line of police duty. Shepard begins to fear that she is becoming like her father and committing similar murders, especially after a fourth of her former lovers is murdered, SFPD Officer Jimmy SchmidtShepard wakes up with Schmidt's corpse in her bed. In each case, the murder seems to have been committed using a
yawara. Shepard is skilled in delivering blows with a yawara, so she is arrested and questioned for the murders but is bailed by Mills after blood work evidence undertaken by pathologist Lisa reveals that Shepard's blood had strong amounts of
rohypnol
Flunitrazepam, also known as Rohypnol among other names, is a benzodiazepine used to treat severe insomnia and assist with anesthesia. As with other hypnotics, flunitrazepam has been advised to be prescribed only for short-term use or by those ...
, which means she was incapacitated during the Schmidt murder and thus cannot have committed the crime.
Mills tells Shepard that he suspects Delmarco of being the killer, Delmarco having grown increasingly close to Shepard during the course of the investigation. The two turn up at Delmarco's quayside home to question him. Mills serves Delmarco wine laced with rohypnol to incapacitate him, upon which Shepard realises that Mills is the true killer based on how he says they're now "in this together", while he sets up the scene to look as if Delmarco will commit suicide, akin to how her father had looked when he supposedly committed suicide. Mills admits he killed all of Shepard's lovers, as well as her parents and her mother's lovers, because he considered it his mission to prevent her growing up to be a dissolute woman like her mother. As her father's partner, Mills had felt the responsibility to inform him that his wife was a nymphomaniac, which drove him insane. Furthermore, as he himself had an illicit affair with Shepard's mother, Mills felt the need to kill her lovers, ashamed that he helped destroy his partner's marriage and drove him insane. Mills then decided to put him out of his misery by killing him.
Shepard secretly transmits Mills's confession to other police officers on a mobile phone, allowing her old partner Wilson to track them down. When Mills tries to shoot her and Delmarco, Shepard shoots him in the chest, killing him and causing him to fall off a dock into the water.
Cast
Reception
Critical response
Despite its well-established director and cast, ''Twisted'' received almost universally negative reviews, with a rating of 2% on
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
based on reviews from 135 critics with an average score of 3.00/10. The website's critical consensus states: "An implausible, overheated potboiler that squanders a stellar cast, ''Twisted'' is a clichéd, risible whodunit." The film is one of the lowest-rated on the site.
William Thomas writing for ''
Empire
An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) ex ...
'' magazine described the role-reversal of the film as "contrived", while allowing that the film "may dole out a few guilty pleasures".
Box office
The film earned $25,198,598 in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
and
Canada
Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...
and $15,756,005 in other territories for a combined worldwide gross of $40,954,603
"Twisted (2004)"
Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb
IMDb (an abbreviation of Internet Movie Database) is ...
. Retrieved 2010-11-28.—well below the film's production budget of $50 million.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Twisted (2004 Film)
2004 films
2004 crime thriller films
2004 drama films
2004 thriller drama films
2004 psychological thriller films
2000s police films
2000s mystery thriller films
2000s serial killer films
American crime thriller films
American mystery thriller films
American police detective films
American psychological thriller films
American serial killer films
American thriller drama films
Fictional portrayals of the San Francisco Police Department
Films directed by Philip Kaufman
Films produced by Arnold Kopelson
Films scored by Mark Isham
Films set in San Francisco
Films shot in San Francisco
Paramount Pictures films
2000s English-language films
2000s American films