Here is what appears to be an authentic so-bad-it’s-good crime thriller, set on the mean streets of Edinburgh and starring the improbable trio of Gianni Capaldi (Blood of Redemption), Samuel L Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Vincent Cassel (L’Élève). If you’ve ever wondered what a British police procedural television show inexplicably starring this combo of actors would feel like – and why wouldn’t you? – this is the movie for you.
As is traditional, matters begin with a pre-titles cold open featuring a grisly murder: a woman answers the door of her Edinburgh flat to a caped and hooded maniac who proceeds to dismember her. (Per the rules of the subgenre, you don’t see all that much of the murder itself, but you do get all the gory details during the subsequent crime scene photography sequence.) “Why do serial killers always gotta bring this cult shit into it?” Jackson’s character laments. But “this cult shit” is of course practically obligatory. If you’re a killer in one of these films and you’re not hiding torsos in undisclosed locations, laying out limbs and heads in the shape of a cross and having yourself some fun with cryptic references to scripture, can you really call yourself a legitimate movie lunatic?
The cop characters could stand to take a leaf out of the killer’s book, in fact, since while the murders are conducted by said book (the Bible, naturally), the police work seems iffier. At one point the main cop (who is definitely played by Capaldi, regardless of the promotional material’s artful pretence that this is a two-hander starring Jackson and Cassel) announces that he has found an important clue: a key which doesn’t seem to fit any of the locks in the woman’s flat. (Hell, if that’s a clue, I hope nothing horrible ever happens to me; there must be around half a dozen such clues strewn around my place.)
The so-bad-it’s-good genre has taken a bit of a hit lately, what with all the ironic winks to camera and deliberate striving for kitsch status in a world where becoming a successful meme is potentially the best promotional gimmick available. But Damaged isn’t trying to be a meme, it’s playing things completely straight, and trying to be a serious police procedural in the vein of 90s thrillers such as Se7en or Primal Fear. That sincerity, and the apparent genuine commitment of top-tier performers like Jackson, is what makes this ripely absurd film at least half-worth watching.
• Damaged is on Prime Video from 6 September.
