In 2014, the Argentine writer-director Damien Szifron caused a stir with “Wild Tales”. The Oscar-nominated Almodóvar-produced feature consisted of six increasingly over-the-top stories that gave a dark, comedic twist to human behaviors at their worst, adding up to a flamboyantly enjoyable package. It’s surprising that it took him nearly a decade to deliver his next feature, and even more surprising that it’s his English language debut.”To catch a killer.”

This thriller set in Baltimore, with Shailene Woodley as a cop assisting an FBI agent Ben Mendelsohn tracking down a mass shooter, is the on-screen equivalent of a page-turner: a solid investigative walkthrough that doesn’t break new ground, but offers enough suspense, character interest, and action of confident manner. Nonetheless, it’s a curiously impersonal and straightforward genre piece for a writer-director who so asserted his authorial ground last time out. Vertical Entertainment opens it on more than 500 US screens this Friday.

Amid the sound of fireworks, attendees at a New Year’s Eve party in a penthouse are slow to realize they are under deadly attack by sniper fire, as do others in the vicinity. When police arrive and trace the path of the bullets, they believe the shooter is (or was) in a building opposite – a suspicion confirmed when an apartment in that building explodes, erasing all evidence. At that time, twenty-nine people were killed by such an expert sniper that no shots were missed or simply injured.

Among the street cops who initially responded to the emergency is Eleanor Falco (Woodley). Later, FBI investigator Lammark (Mendelsohn) overhears her speculation about the massacre – while others assume a terrorist organization is involved, she thinks it’s a lone wolf – and is impressed. He thinks she has the makings of a good detective, that she’s as screwed up as the culprit, or, ultimately, both. He’s an obnoxious, demanding guy with little respect for local police personnel, so he commandeers this junior officer as a “liaison” who will work alongside him and his only other chosen teammate, the more affable Mackenzie ( Jovan Adepo).

Lammark is still unaware that Falco had previously applied to become an FBI agent and failed psychological tests. She’s something of a lone wolf herself, with a traumatic past that isn’t very well lit in Szifron and Jonathan Wakeham’s script, but highlights an all-too-obvious debt to “The Silence of the Lambs” by drawing a protagonist. devoted but troubled feminine.

While the police blindly arrest every paranoid malcontent in sight, eager to quell public pressure, our central trio more methodically hunts down their prey. This frustrates politicians, the media and other powers looking for quick results, a situation that is made worse when there is a second mass shooting, almost certainly by the same person. The final half-hour of the film leaves town for a wintry countryside where this murderer lurks, and their explanatory annoyances (until recently the project was titled “Misanthrope”) are revealed.

As this information spills out into awkward talk, it’s a bit too late to make any meaningful statement about the kind of resentful social isolation, conspiracy theory and bigotry that often seem to create such monsters today. trigger-happy. Similarly, the intricacies of Woodley and Mendelsohn’s “difficult” characters aren’t probed enough in the writing to feel fully realized, even though both performers are fine.

Nonetheless, the film works well enough as a procedural thriller, maintaining a tense, haunting atmosphere between skillfully-crafted action peaks. The scenes in which we know something terrible is about to happen at a mall food court and a shooting at a drug store chain are particularly good. hazard.

The notion of the city as a potential firing range is portrayed vividly enough that there’s something anticlimactic about the skillfully staged rural final stretch. Montreal portrays Baltimore quite deftly in a sleek yet gritty design package whose only silly note is a slight excess of aerial shots (and clever upside-down perspectives) in the otherwise top-notch widescreen photography. of Julia.

Indeed, the worst thing you can say about “To Catch a Killer” is that it’s so expertly executed in all departments that one is disappointed that it ends up feeling a bit generic. It’s captivating, sometimes exciting, but never completely free of a general sense of derivation. It’s the classic case of a movie good enough, with talent strong enough on board, that you wonder why it’s not better – why a progression that holds a viewer tightly for two hours leaves such a fleeting impression. afterwards.