At last night’s premiere of The Killer Inside Me — which stars Casey Affleck as a psycho cop and Jessica Alba as an object of his wrath — there were audible gasps at the graphic violence in the film. In the most brutal scene, Affleck’s character punches Alba repeatedly in the face. Still, the actress says the violence is actually a “glossy†take on the moments in the novel (by Jim Thompson) that the film is based on. She also denied rumors that she had left the screening at Sundance because she couldn’t stand to watch the movie: “Absolutely not true. I was originally just meant to come in a few minutes and support the movie. My daughter and husband were sick at home and there was no one to take care of them, so I had to get back.â€
Affleck recalled the difficulty he had shooting the scene. “We’re all just actors — maybe haven’t thrown a punch in eight years, [and] no one wants to break their hand,†he said. “Most the time I’m hitting a stunt woman — I’m trying really hard to not actually hit her because you feel horrible if you do, but they just take it. And then you feel horrible because you just hit this woman in the face.â€