Texas Killing Fields


Texas Killing Fields is a 2011 American crime film directed by Ami Canaan Mann and starring Sam Worthington, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Jessica Chastain and Chloë Grace Moretz. It competed in the 68th Venice International Film Festival in September.
Several killings occur along Houston's I-45 corridor between Houston and Galveston, in and around an area known as "the Killing Fields". The film's screenplay was loosely inspired by true events surrounding the murders of women kidnapped from cities spread along 30-plus miles of the I-45 corridor and dumped in many areas, including various bayous surrounding the oil fields of Texas City, Texas. While in real life there have been several itinerant serial killers involved over the years, the film focuses on specific local Texas City suspects.

Plot

Homicide detectives Mike Souder and Brian Heigh investigate the murder of a girl and the disappearance of a young woman. Meanwhile, Ann Sliger, a neglected local girl whose mother Lucie is a drug addict, goes missing.

Cast

The film was originally going to be directed by Danny Boyle before he left the project and was replaced by Ami Canaan Mann, daughter of director Michael Mann, who produced the film. Boyle said that the film was "so dark it would never get made".
The film was distributed overseas by Entertainment Film Distributors, a British company. Filming began on May 3, 2010, in Louisiana, United States.

Soundtrack

The soundtrack was scored by Dickon Hinchliffe except for three tracks credited to The Americans.

Reception

Texas Killing Fields received mixed to negative reviews from critics. Review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a score of 37% based on 46 reviews, with a consensus that read: "Texas Killing Fields is a competent boilerplate crime thriller, brewing up characters and plots used in better films." Metacritic gave the film a rating of 49/100, based on 17 reviews.
Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun Times gave the film two out of four stars and said, "Texas Killing Fields begins along the lines of a police procedural and might have been perfectly absorbing if it had played by the rules: strict logic, attention to detail, reference to technical police work. Unfortunately, the movie often seems to stray from such discipline." Betsy Sharkey of the Los Angeles Times commented that "like the Texas City killer's plans, something's gone terribly wrong" with the film. On a more lenient note, James Mottram of GamesRadar wrote: "Mann Jr. shows plenty of promise in a film that doesn’t tarnish the family name. But hindered by niggling flaws, it hardly revolutionises an over-saturated genre."