American and Hollywood values influence the western world and since 2001 there has been an exponential rise in graphic on-screen violence.

The hero of a popular and gory TV show is a serial Killer. A popular sub-genre of Horror deals with torture and mutilation. Computer Generated blood spurts for every kill in a historical movie or action adventure. Young girls dressed as schoolgirls are punched by grown men. How we have changed?

There is an argument that women are often the victims of this graphic on-screen torture and violence. It is clear that to see a woman reach an on-screen orgasm is a much rarer sight that seeing a woman brutalised or violated in some way.

This American penchant for screen violence has a general desensitising affect upon the impressionable. Some people get a satisfying reaction from the graphic violence alone and this morbid curiosity is exploited by the Hollywood studios.

Casey Affleck may have been successful at playing the retarded Robert Ford in The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (2007) but as an actor he has a very limited range. His expressions consist of open mouthed incomprehension.

In fact, Casey Affleck is totally miscast as Lou Ford in The Killer Inside Me (2010). An actor with charisma, talent, looks and charm was necessary simply because of the casting of Kate Hudson or Jessica Alba.

The film as a whole is a waste of time and the violence is gratuitous.

The Alba beating, may be shocking but it is unconvincing. To claim that showing such a graphic beating is justified because it is a realistic depiction of such violence is incorrect. The beating as shot by Michael Winterbottom is in fact melodramatic and romanticised.

Take for example the pistol whipping in Goodfellas (1990) where Ray Liotta walks up to his neighbour, who is washing his car and beats him down. The reason this scene, as directed by Martin Scorsese, is so powerful and shocking is the way the body reacts to the beating by suddenly going limp.

During The Killer Inside Me, Jessica Alba is repeatedly punched in the face, huge sound effects punctuate the hits, yet her nose appears unbroken and she can still talk right up until the last.

This film will leave you feeling uncomfortable because its depictions are not honest. The Killer Inside Me revels in the violence it shows much like an episode in the SAW franchise.