Movies - To catch a killer
To Catch a Killer (2023)
Baltimore. New Year’s Eve. A talented but troubled police officer (Shailene Woodley) is recruited by the FBI’s chief investigator (Ben Mendelsohn) to help profile and track down a disturbed individual terrorizing the city.
Characters:
- Special Agent Lammark from the Bureau’s regional field office.
- Eleanor Falco
- Jack McKenzie (Lammark’s colleague from the Bureau)
Lammark: Except the range of personality disorders is so extensive that it includes all of us here. Depression, anxiety, schizophrenia. PPD, NPD, PTSD. We took every crazy off the street, there would be no one left to police them.
Lammark: It’s a fart in a hurricane.
Eleanor: [looking over the victims] There’s no pattern. Why?
Lammark: Well, we can speculate… That nature’s not to blame. Culture is. We’re all different, we still act the same. Rush hour, lunch hour, Black Friday, New Year’s Eve. We just blindly follow the same patterns. He’s not punishing people, he’s disrupting behavior. There’s no torture, no reveling in the suffering. Just a - poof. Quick one-way ticket to Narnia.
Eleanor: Why did you sign that memo?
Lammark: You can’t fight every battle. Have to choose the ones you can win.
Eleanor: Yeah, but when you sign, you’re a part of the game.
Lammark: And when you don’t, they replace you. The only decision you’re making is whether to be buried or burned.
Eleanor: Jesse Capleton can’t fire you. He’s not your boss.
Lammark: Jesse Capleton operates my boss, who operates him in return. Guys like that, it’s a circle jerk. All it takes is one call. “Don’t you think Lammark’s a little off his game?” “Well, there is no bigger fan than me, but we do have to think of his heart.” They each say what the other one wants to hear. Before you know it, you’re packing your desk into a box.
Lammark’s partner: That’s the big question: how people shape systems, how systems shape us. Today, it’s all about status. The people that have it would kill to protect it, the people that want it would kill to achieve it, and everybody else gets crushed in between. Governments, corporations and high schools. Pattern seems to be the same. How do we change that?
Lammark: You mean empathy, connection?
Lammark’s partner: If we truly see ourselves in others, we want to raise them up, not bring them down.
Lammark: What scares me is that a good portion of you thinks this man has a point. About the country that stopped the Nazis… Stepped on the moon, mapped the entire human genome and landed a spacecraft on Mars, 140 million miles from your current position.
Lammark’s partner: While landing our brands, our plastic, our distortion, our exaggeration everywhere else. I went to Bogotá to lecture. Best damn coffee on Earth, right? You know where they took me? Starbucks. We take the best of everywhere, and we send it back worse for profit. And that’s what we do to our friends.
Lammark: Profits pay taxes, which pays for research and development.
Eleanor: Hey, Lammark. Take your pills. Ignore the clowns. Fight the jackals.
Eleanor: This is not our killer. This isn’t our case. Let someone else take care of it.
Lammark: I can’t. I’m following orders.
Eleanor: Even when you know they’re wrong?
Lammark: Power is disputed between people who deserve it and people who adore it. It’s a perpetual fight. I can’t say we’re winning. Right now, we got to stay in the ring.
Eleanor: Sir, with all due respect…
Lammark: Oh, goddamn it, Eleanor! You’re following orders, too!
Senior from the Bureau: Mr. Lammark, did you give the order to share the mall footage with “The Kittridge Show”?
Lammark: It was not my strategy. I advised that the plan was risky and flawed.
Senior from the Bureau: But this was your investigation? You had overall control?
Lammark: Yes.
Senior from the Bureau: Was it also under your command that the public were encouraged to call in without even limited screening?
Lammark: Yes, ma’am.
Senior from the Bureau: Just a half hour after the show ended, two teenagers shot two people dead and wounded three more before taking their own lives. In Boston, a Molotov cocktail was thrown through the window of Temple Israel, causing the janitor life-changing injuries. Do you accept responsibility for these crimes?
Lammark: We all know what’s going on here. This is not about the deaths of young men. This is about the ambitions of old ones.
Senior from the Bureau: Do you know the name of the killer?
Lammark: I know he’s someone who’s lived off the grid for obviously…
Senior from the Bureau: Mr. Lammark, please answer the question. Do you know his profession? His place of residence?
Lammark: Not yet.
Senior from the Bureau: It seems that, under your command, information is no cure for ignorance. Perhaps if you’d paid more attention to people who were qualified to help. This internal report suggests that you’ve been taking your lead from a police officer with no investigative experience, rejected by the Bureau, with a long and proven record of addiction. Am I right?
Lammark: Well, that’s not what I took from her application. I saw a fiercely honest, highly motivated person. While everyone else was helping residents flee a burning building, Officer Falco was the only one with the presence of mind to film them doing it. Had our perpetrator been amongst those exiting, it would’ve been solely down to her. I know talent when I see it. It’s a pivotal part of my job.
Senior from the Bureau: Perhaps, Mr. Lammark, we should consider whether your pursuit of new talent is because you know your own is failing. You’ve been a fine public servant, and you’ve fought your illness with courage, but…
Lammark: Okay, okay, okay. I know this man. I know how to find him. You can fire me. You get your sacrifice. You keep me, you will get your killer. What do you want?
Jack McKenzie: Listen, don’t read that mess. Assholes are attracted to comments like flies to shit.
Lammark: Eleanor. They used you as the rope. You’re not the hangman.
Eleanor: Just if you can explain to everyone why it made sense to you to grab a weapon and start shooting people…
Dean: What doesn’t make sense about it? People make so much noise. Year after year, shouting at some stupid fireworks, as if silence and darkness were enemies to defeat. Go back to your fucking caves. At night, there are so many lights on you can’t even see the stars. I want time. I want space. They want things. Fuck them. You’ve either got to be very stupid or very asleep to find this game entertaining. People scrubbing, cleaning up other people’s shit for 12 hours a day for a handful of green paper?
Eleanor: I went to the slaughterhouse today. There was a woman, Ramona. She seemed fond of you.
Dean: Yeah. She wasn’t bad. That place, though… One morning, after an all-nighter, I traced the cow’s path backwards. Started in the burger section, went through cutting, saw the cows getting skinned and cut in two, then the cows getting the bolt to the head. Then I followed a truck back to the farm. Jumped a fence, walked around the lake, and there they were. Magnificent. They seemed grateful for their existence. They didn’t want to change. Didn’t want to evolve. They just wanted to be there, breathing. To live and die, then dissipate back into the whole. Isn’t that what we all want?
Eleanor: Why don’t you just go away? I’m sure there’s a place you can go live like the cows out on the farm.
Dean: Nah. Everywhere you go belongs to someone. Everywhere you go, you got to have money. They-they got to know who you are. They… they’re always checking up on you. They’re always asking. They’re always watching. Now they got drones, satellites spying from outer space. This whole planet’s a fucking prison. Why do I have to play by your rules? I don’t know how to make money. I don’t know how to win votes. But who has the real power? Life and death from a thousand feet away. I may not find peace, but I can deliver retribution.
Eleanor: Retribution is not what you need.
Dean: What, then? Love?
Eleanor: Yes. Some of us have been so mistreated we don’t even know what it’s like to feel good anymore. They burned our bridges to pleasure. But I think they can be rebuilt.