Review of To Catch a Killer, directed by Damián Szifron

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

For three years I worked professionally as a film critic, and while going to all of the film festivals and interviewing directors and actors was cool for a while, but I wanted to reclaim my time and watch movies I wanted to watch. Sometimes watching all of the new releases is great, and behind ahead of the curve, but I feel like I was falling so behind on movies I was genuinely excited about.

I recently fell into a spell of unemployment probably during the worst time to be unemployed, as it was very hard to find a job. I was applying to hundreds of jobs, getting interviews, but no offer was manifesting for me in the near future. So during this time, I had a lot of free time, and spent a good chunk of it chipping away at the blog.

In-between applying to jobs and trying to get some work done with my freelance and contract jobs, I was spending a lot of time on Netflix. In other blog posts I’ve mentioned needing to balance my budget when it comes to streaming platforms, so I had to pick and choose my battles when it came to what streaming platforms I wanted without breaking the bank.

When you’re on a limited income, you only have so much you can do, so Netflix was my go-to half of the time. When To Catch a Killer was added onto Netflix, I watched it the same day. I probably should’ve dropped my review during that time, as I heard this was the first time this movie was really available anywhere.

I wanted to watch this movie specifically because it was set in Baltimore. I was born and raised in Baltimore County, with my parents having been struggling young people in Baltimore City before having me, a mixed couple not long after it became legal to actually be together. I know this city intimately, so it always intrigues and infuriates me when I go into media breakdowns of the city’s depictions.

And that’s why I watched this! Let’s get into the review, as I can keep rambling forever.

A Baltimore police officer is recruited by the FBI to try and track down a killer.

This film begins during New Year’s Eve, in Baltimore. As the fireworks start to ricochet off the buildings downtown, a party breaks out into chaos. 29 people are killed by an unknown assailant shooting from somewhere else, and as Baltimore police show up and try to figure out where he’s shooting from, he sets off a series of explosives.

After this, an FBI agent named Geoffrey is assigned to the case and needs to get the Baltimore Police Department to work with him. There, an officer named Eleanor Falco, who has many struggles in her own life, discusses the killer and the motives, and Geoffrey hears this and is impressed. He asks her to join the investigation team, and she agrees to it.

The investigation continues, and they learn the killer is someone who knows how to hide everything he did up until this point. He can easily shoot people down, as he is trained in shooting, and there are no obvious links to who he is. The next big event, though, is a shooting at a local mall.

It began when security came after him for stealing clothes from another shopper, then was aggravated by other shoppers when going through the mall. He starts a shooting rampage, but Geoffrey and Eleanor uncover that he did’t plan to do this originally. It was the security confrontation that ultimately set him off in the end.

The killer is now national news though, and a cable show asks viewers to call in and comment on what’s happening in Maryland. One call is very suspicious and Geoffrey’s higher ups asks him to go after the man, which leads to a local pharmacy/corner store. They don’t plan on starting shooting, but the guys there pull out guns first, resorting to violence and killing one of the guys.

Turns out though that they weren’t who they were looking for, and Geoffrey is fired from the FBI. Eleanor then realizes someone they interviewed before might have a connection to the real killer, and Geoffrey and she go back to the guy. He said he recognized the killer, as he used to hire ex-cons, and the vegan connection from the mall footage made him confirm it was him.

With the information they received from this guy, Eleanor and Geoffrey go to the slaughterhouses to find out who the killer, now identified as Dean, is. An employee confirms the police sketch is Dean, and that he killed someone he worked with a while back and only got a couple years.

The next step for the duo is to go to Dean’s home. They find his mother there and she says she will help them, but then Dean, shooting from afar, kills Geoffrey. He requests Eleanor kill him after they have a chat, but then the FBI and police show up, and he starts shooting. Eleanor manages to stop him by biting him in the neck, but then when the officers get to him, he lifts him to weapon to get them to kill him.

Although Geoffrey died, Eleanor goes back to work, and is offered a job at the FBI as long as she stays silent about what led to his death. She takes the job, but only after they acknowledge his work and role at the FBI publicly.

Overall Thoughts

For me, this wasn’t that great of a movie. Nothing in it stood out particularly when it came to acting, plot, or how the film itself was constructed. Some movies in this genre can really stick out with how they use the elements of what makes a good movie in their favor, but this movie just kind of existed to me.

The performances were also kind of flat throughout too, but they did do their job in the end. I’m not entirely mad at the actors.

I did sigh though when this movie took place in Baltimore and only used it as a kind of violent place. Like yeah, it doesn’t play a role beyond being the setting, but it does play into the stereotype that Baltimore is a ghetto, violent place, and not an up and coming metropolis full of kindness, art, and good food (just to name a few things—there’s so much more, but I would go on forever).

I say go watch this if you have nothing else to watch on a Friday movie night, or it interests you. If not, maybe skip it.

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