Genre: Thriller/Drama
Director: S. Craig Zahler
Writer: Mo Buck
Based on the novel by Patrick Sénécal
Cast: Bryan Cranston, John Hawkes, Sterling K. Brown, Julianne Moore, Keith Carradine, Laura Dern, Joe Keery, Mckenna Grace
Plot:
DAY 1
John Hamels (Bryan Cranston) is waiting in front of the courthouse. He’s nervous, practically shaking. It’s the day his life will turn upside down. He’s never going to be same person again. He’ll probably never be able to look his family pictures, like the one he’s looking at, right now. Jasmine, his daughter, died almost ten years ago today and he’s still not over it. He cries and kisses the picture.
BEFORE
It all started ten years ago. On a sunny Sunday afternoon, Jasmine Hamels (Mckenna Grace) went outside to play with her friends. John had no idea that it would be the last time he saw his 12-year-old daughter. He never kissed her goodbye, never hugged her for one last time. She just went out to ride her bike a couple of blocks to go be with her friends, just like she did three to four times a week. It was almost routine at this point. Only this time, Jasmine never played with her friends and she never came back to eat dinner with her parents at 6 p.m. Jasmine was savagely raped and murdered in a park. John had a hard time to recognize her. His wife, and Jasmine’s mother, Katy (Julianne Moore), never had the guts to take a look at their daughter. She was completely disfigured, even John had a hard time to recognize her. John is a surgeon, that’s why he’s used to gross things, well that’s what Katy said.
DAY 1
John is still crying, as a mass of journalists slowly crawl up the stairs of the courthouse, he’s going to come out soon. John kisses the picture one last time as he tightens the grip on the gun he’s hiding in his pants.
BEFORE
Nine years. That’s how long John and Katy had to live without knowing who did this to their daughter. Nine years. Katy eventually moved on from their only daughter’s death, but not John. He said he would never get over it until he knows who did it and he has the chance to talk to him. He wants to hear him confess. That’s what will help John move on. Every time the alleged killer is mentioned on TV, John turns it off. The man who did this to his daughter isn’t worth the world’s attention. He isn’t even a man in John’s eyes, just a monster and monsters don’t have names, they don’t have any redeemable human qualities.
DAY 1
The lawyers are the first one out. John is sweating profusely. He juggles with the thought of giving everything up, to go back home and grieve in silence, just like everyone does, to finally get over it after nearly ten years. But John has gone too far, too far to just give up.
BEFORE
When John heard of the monster (John Hawkes)’s arrest, he did drastic things to ensure that his plan, his plan he planned for the last nine years, will come to fruition. Without his wife’s knowledge, John empties his savings account. With the money, he rents a used car, cheap and so common, it doesn’t even draw attention. He rents two apartments, one is the suburbs, just outside the city and one in the countryside, in a town where nothing ever happens. He also buys a gun on the black market and some communication material, some that can’t be traced. The same man who sold him his gun, Alex (Joe Keery) will also do something else for him later. He also gets in touch with a repairman, Stu Wilson (Keith Carradine) in the small town where he rented an apartment. He wants him to renovate a cottage deep in the woods. The cottage is owned by John’s colleague, but he never set foot in it in over two years. The plan is almost ready, there’s one last thing that needs to be done. He heads over to the hospital, where he works and he steals some material. He leaves without leaving any trace, incognito. When John comes back to his house, he sees divorce papers next to his newly acquired gun. Katy discovered his plan and is asking for divorce. The next day he will strike and he’ll get what he wants anyway.
DAY 1
Just before dawn, John calls Alex for one last favor. He will enter in the courthouse’s garage while John distracts the guard, unlock the transport van and will hide a tank of Nitroglycerin, that John will set off from distance. After Alex is done, John goes back to his car, where he will spend the entire day.
After the lawyers come out, the journalists are now too focused on them to focus on the convict being transported out of the building. John starts his car and follows them. When they get to a less-crowded area of the city, he sets off the tank of Nitroglycerin. He watches as the two policemen escorting the convict get out of the van to breathe. He puts on his Super Mario mask and grabs his pistol. He threatens the two men with his pistol and they’re both on the verge of collapsing. He gets away with the “monster” in the trunk. He removes his mask and breathes heavily. The plan is underway, there’s no going back now.
John drives all the way to the cottage. All his surgery material is there. He planned everything down to every little detail. He drags the still unconscious man inside and he ties him up. He dumps the van in the lake and he goes back inside. Before he wakes him up, he uses his satellite phone and he calls his wife Katy. He tells her that he kidnapped the monster who killed their daughter and he promises that he will execute him after 7 days. He will then come out and face justice for what he did. He says it’s the only way he can get over his little girl’s death. He makes the same call to the police. Detective Michael Woodson (Sterling K. Brown) listens to the call and he’s assigned the case. He needs to find John Hamels within a week.
John decides to wake up the man. He starts gently, asking him questions. He denies any wrongdoing regarding his daughter’s death and says he didn’t do it, even if he already admitted to the police that it was him who killed Jasmine. He believes he made a mistake and that he has the wrong person. The monster is doing this out of fear that John is going to kill him, but in his state of fury and despair, John has lost the sense to recognize human behavior and thinks the man is making fun of him. John decides to make him suffer slowly. He grabs a pair of pliers and removes his nails. He enjoys it at first, but when he sees that the man isn’t giving him any answers, he gives up. He grabs a hammer and strikes him directly on the kneecap. John leaves.
Michael Woodson receives an unsuspecting call. Katy Hamels is on line one and she’s ready to give Woodson every detail of her husband’s vendetta. She comes over to the police station and together, they start to understand that John will do her daughter’s killer. They just don’t where at that’s the key that will unlock everything.
DAY 2
John is still asking questions to the monster, with high hopes that he will finally confess, but even the broken kneecap didn’t work. He still claims that he didn’t do it. As another form of punishment, John shows him homemade video of what he intends to do to him, to try to persuade him to tell the truth. All of this while John is urinating on him. His efforts are vain, the monster keeps his mouth shut. Maybe two broken kneecaps will do the trick. He smashes the other one with the hammer before leaving.
DAY 3
As always, John starts his day by eating two bland toasts while listening to the morning news. Only this time, he wished that he hadn’t. Right when he turns on the television, they mention it. Anthony Sinclair. That’s the monster’s name. He’s human after all. The media draw a particular profile on the Sinclair, from his childhood to the murder of the Jasmine. For the first time in nearly ten years, he realizes that the man he branded as a monster, is human and has a name: Anthony Sinclair. John starts to regret what he’s doing. He never looked at it like the monster who killed his daughter was human. He pops open a bottle of whiskey and drinks it all. Completely drunk, he calls Katy. He doesn’t know it, but the called is tapped. Woodson is also listening. He says he will kill the man if the media continues to talk about him. The call abruptly ends when John claims he hears dogs approaching but there are no dogs.
Woodson calls sends out a memo to all the local news channel to not talk about Anthony Sinclair at all. Woodson then talks to the IT guys, but unfortunately, they weren’t able to trace the call, it was too short.
A couple of hours later, an even drunker John turns the TV on and a news channel is still talking about Sinclair’s criminal career. Tired to hear about him, he decides to pay him a visit. He starts by hitting him with his belt and after he refuses to let the cat out of the bag, John starts his first operation. He injects him curare, a powerful antibiotic that paralyzes the inferior members of a subject, but they’re still able to feel and more importantly, to feel the pain. He performs a Colostomy on Sinclair and cuts a part of his colon. John leaves a bloody Sinclair alone in the cabin, as he goes back to the apartment he rented.
DAY 4
Michael Woodson arrives at work early this morning to try to review everything he has on the Hamels case. As it starts to come to an end, he wants to do everything in his power to find Hamels before he kills Sinclair. A colleague gives him a box addressed to him. He opens it and there’s a letter from John, urging, once again, the media to stop talking about Sincair. When Woodson flips the box over to make sure there isn’t anything else, the part John removed from Sinclair’s colon drops on the floor. Woodson urges, once again, the media to stop talking about Sinclair, or else, he will sue them.
Katy Hamels is on the news again. She takes the opportunity to distance herself from her husband and to tell the world that he’s gone insane. In collaboration with the police, she releases a photofit of her husband. After she leaves, she receives a call from a fuming John who tells her that she didn’t have to do that and that he still loves her. He once again ends the call abruptly as he claims, once again, that he hears dogs approaching. John is drunk once again. He decides to go buy some food at a convenience store. He puts on his fake mustache and his fake beard. He also changes his glasses. Despite his costume, the clerk recognizes him. She tells him that she approves what he’s doing, and she promises that she won’t tell. As far as she’s concerned, that monster deserves it, for what he did to his daughter. When John goes back to the cottage, he decides to perform his second operation. Before he’s able to do anything, Sinclair snaps. He admits that he killed his daughter. Instead of fulfilling John’s desire, it triggers him to another level. He drops Sinclair’s pants and before he can do anything else, he hears someone knocking at the door.
DAY 5
John goes to the door and it’s Stu Wilson, the man who renovated the cottage. He says he was just passing by and he saw that John’s car was here and there was light inside, so he decided to come and ask if he likes it. John asks what is he doing out so late and before letting him the chance to answer, he says he likes it. Sinclair starts screaming and it catches Wilson’s attention. Suddenly, everything starts to make sense. He remembers the photofit on TV and realises that John is torturing someone inside the cottage. Stu punches John and tries to free Sinclair. John takes out his pistol and fires warning shots. Wilson gives up and threatens John that he will tell everything. John wishes him luck, because he’s an accomplice, he helped him to renovate the cottage. Wilson says he has nothing to lose and he wants the reminder of John’s money, or else, he’ll rat him out. John unlocks his safe and gives it to him, but before he lets him go, he has him perform the castration. A traumatized, but rich Stu leaves the cottage. One thing is sure, he will not rat John Hamels out.
John is having a nightmare. It’s a recurring nightmare in his life. It’s about an event that happened in his childhood. His best friend had a Great Dane, a dog and one day the big dog bit his friend in the face, disfiguring him. As a punishment, the father killed the dog in front of John, with a shovel. It all happened so fast, but he remembers it all. That day changed John. He always a unholy desire for vengeance and it was born that day.
In the afternoon, John decides to torture Sinclair once again. He says he wants to pop Sinclair’s left eye out. The procedure is underway and between two loud screams, Sinclair says that Jasmine wasn’t the only one. He did the same thing to three other girls, but he never got caught for those. He hopes that this revelation will stop John in his tracks, but he’s wrong. John thanks him for the juicy update, but he pop his eye out anyway.
John decides to call Michael Woodson to let him know what Sinclair told him while he was torturing the poor man. Woodson makes the call last longer on purpose to allow them to triangulate the call. John’s phone isn’t untraceable, unlike what Alex told him. When they get a localization, Woodson hangs up and they drive all the way to the address. Even if John called them from the apartment, he’s long gone when they get there.
DAY 6
The media interview the three mothers of the other young girls who were killed by Sinclair. Two of them say they approve what John’s doing due to the disgusting things this psychopath did to their kids, but not Maryse Perkins (Laura Dern). She’s interviewed live on TV, outside her house, by Woodson. She says she disapproves, because vengeance won’t bring back her daughter and that torture is wrong, no matter to who it’s applied. She ends the interview by begging Hamels to give Sinclair back to the authorities and to let the system take care of him. In retrospect, Maryse will wish that she never did that interview with Woodson. John is watching and he recognizes her house, he passes in front of it everyday on his way to work. He’s drunk and he didn’t like what she said.
Maryse is sipping on a pina colada with her cat on her knees, watching her favorite daytime soap opera, unsuspecting. She quit her job after her daughter died and lived on welfare ever since. She’s quite happy, given her situation, but things could be better. All of this brought back some old memories and those are the kind of memories you would rather forget. She hears someone slamming the door of his car out front and peeks in the window. She doesn’t see anyone. All of a sudden, her door bursts open and John Hamels is in her house. She starts screaming, and John threatens her with his pistol. He tells her to shut up and to follow her to the car and she obeys.
Everyone is now back at the cottage and John forces Maryse to come face to face with the man who killed her daughter. He leaves her alone with the man and urges her to torture him. He sits outside, drinking. Maryse and Anthony talk, but don’t exchange very much. She inquires if he’s hurt and if he needs medical help. She says she’ll never forgive him for what he did, but she reassures him that no other human being should have to face that. She wishes him luck and tries to leave. It’s now nighttime and she can’t see very well. She opens the front door and the path seems clear. She slowly advances and she’s hit from behind by John. He puts her back in the car and dumps her on the side of the road, somewhere, in the middle of nowhere. Mad that she didn’t do anything to him, John races back to the cottage and he takes out all his frustration on Sinclair with a scalpel, telling him that he deserves it, he deserves it all. John passes out in front of Sinclair.
DAY 7
Maryse Perkins contacted Michael Woodson as soon as she was able to enter somewhere, because everything was closed for the night. She tells him that she knows where he is and it’s not too late to stop him. Woodson drops his coffee and gets to his car. A horde of police officers and journalists follow him.
John wakes up when he hears someone tapping on his shoulder. He puts his glasses back on and sees that it’s his daughter Jasmine. He says that he will avenge her death soon and he must do it quick. He says he promised that he would do it on day number seven and it is today. He asks her if she thinks that will avenge her death, but she doesn’t answer. He begs her again and again, but she doesn’t answer. She slowly backs away and she finally disappears. John is now crying as he doesn’t know if he did the right thing. He calls Sinclair by his name for the first time and he asks him if he did the right thing. Sinclair says that if it helped him overcome her death, then it was worth it. He says he may or may not deserve this, but John is really going to kill him, he should do it now, because he can’t take it anymore.
While Sinclair is discussing with Hamels, Michael Woodson and his team of officers slowly circle the cottage. Woodson decides to act while Hamels is vulnerable and devoid of any weapons. He enters the cottage silently and hides his gun. He presents himself to Hamels and says that he has to arrest him now. He can’t do anything about it, the cottage is under heavy surveillance. Hamels doesn’t resist and he’s escorted out. Paramedics enter to attend Sinclair.
On his way out, John Hamels is asked only one question by the sea of reporters who are covering the event : was it worth it? He answers that vengeance wasn’t the solution but he’ll never regret the horrible things he did to Anthony Sinclair.
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