DAMAGED: 2 ½ STARS. “a feature that feels like episodic television.”
“Damaged,” a new crime drama starring Samuel L Jackson and Vincent Cassel, and now streaming on VOD, is a feature that feels like episodic television, right up to a cliffhanger-y ending that should come with a “To Be Continued” end credit.
When Edinburgh, Scottish police discover a body killed in a ritualistic fashion—the victim’s arms and legs are dismembered and left in a cross formation—they bring in Dan Lawson, a brilliant Chicago police detective with a drinking problem, who investigated a series of murders with the same MO years before.
“Kills five seemingly random people in Chicago,” says a Captain Ford (Mark Holden), “then lays low for six years. Do you think it’s a copycat?”
“We never published any images of how the body parts were laid out,” Lawson says. “I want in on this.”
Upon arrival, he’s told the Scottish police have never seen a case as violent as the gruesome remains left at the crime scene. But Lawson has. Five years before this same serial killer murdered his girlfriend.
As Lawson and Scottish Detective Chief Inspector Glen Boyd (Gianni Capaldi) chase down clues, the red herrings and twists keep the killer just out of reach. By the time Lawson’s former partner Bravo (Cassel), now a crime writer who designs security systems on the side, shows up, there are more bodies, including one that makes the case even more personal.
“Damaged” is a pastiche of serial killer movies with a mystical “DaVinci Code” flavor and some very charming Scottish accents. Despite the extreme situation—cops working on the murder of their loved ones—the movie follows familiar police procedural beats.
Jackson is reliably good, and it is fun to hear him do a toned-down riff on his “Pulp Fiction” Ezekiel 25:17 speech, even though for the rest of the movie he mostly recites lines straight out of Police Speak 101. Lines like “I didn’t come here to sit on the sidelines,” or “What is wrong with this picture?” bring a generic feel that permeates the rest of the film.
Truth is, there’s nothing wrong, exactly, with “Damaged.” First-time feature director Terry McDonough, has a ton of episodic television under his belt, shows like “Killing Eve,” “Better Call Saul” and “Breaking Bad” and knows how to keep the action moving along, but there’s nothing here that feels really fresh.
“Damaged” has star power and a twisty-turny plot, but feels like a small screen diversion.
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