Watch Nicole Kidman in the toughest role she's ever had to do

Sickly, dishevelled, hungover (or worse), with a voice that suggests death warmed up on a very low flame, she would scare away rats as a potential source of bubonic plague. You have to wonder, in fact, whether any actress needs to go to such lengths (as did Charlize Theron in Monster) to look this lousy.

But Kidman is an unusually strategic actress, with both the technique and intuition to deliver the correct emotional payload in any given scene. She can be trusted to make a challenging role work. Here, she’s Erin Bell, an LAPD detective whose life has been in an unrightable tailspin since an undercover operation went disastrously wrong.