Crime movies are a captivating genre because they are the perfect holdall; a crime thriller can be altogether suspenseful and grotesque and profound, a reflection of our dual humanity. It is in this spirit that Ami Canaan Mann (Morning, Friday Night Lights) helmed Texas Killing Fields, which is available on Blu-ray and DVD beginning January 31st, and is the director's follow-up feature film after more than a decade of writing and directing for TV.

The seedling for the script is found in Texas City, the outskirts of which harbor a massive, haunting field with a macabre history. Over sixty murders were dumped within this region, known by locals as the Killing Fields and it was from this that director/producer Michael Mann (Thief, Heat) was inspired to commission a script. Like a lot of movies in Hollywood, it took years for all the right particles to come together and greenlight a story into creation but when it finally did, the story succeeded in its director’s aim to do three important things: do right by the families of the real victims, put a face to the victims of sexual assault murders, and to evoke the horror of the story in a sophisticated, non-procedural manner.

To achieve all that, Texas Killing Fields makes use of the genre’s elasticity. On the one hand, you have the high-stakes plot: the story focuses on two detectives, committed to finding the culprit of a murder that had been dumped in the field, who end up having to race the clock in order to save the life of another potential Killing Field victim, played by Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass). Sam Worthington (Avatar) plays Detective Mike Souder, Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen) plays his partner, Brian Heigh, and Jessica Chastain (The Help) plays the former-Mrs.-Souder, Detective Pam Stall.

Opening in theaters on October 14th is a new crime thriller from first time director Ami Canaan Mann, daughter of director Michael Mann (Heat), called Texas Killing Fields. The film reunites The Debt co-stars Sam Worthington (Avatar) and Jessica Chastain (The Help), as well as featuring a cast of exceptional actors including Jeffrey Dean Morgan (Watchmen), Jason Clarke (TV's The Chicago Code), Annabeth Gish (The X-Files), Sheryl Lee (Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me), Stephen Graham (Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides), and Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass). 

IAR's managing editor Jami Philbrick recently had a chance to sit down and speak with actor Sam Worthington, as well as director Ami Canaan Mann about Texas Killing Fields. Worthington, and Mann spoke honestly about the new film, the true story that it is based on, Mann's approach to the material, Worthington's research into his role; why he wanted to re-team with his The Debt co-star Jessica Chastain, and the "good cop/bad cop" routine. 

Given that he's the star of the biggest film of all time, it's strange to consider that just two years ago, American audiences weren't familiar with Sam Worthington, the Australian actor who played ex-marine-turned-interplanetary revolutionary Jake Sully in James Cameron's Avatar.  That film conquered theaters and brought about the current wave of 3D features in 2009, the same year that Worthington starred alongside Christian Bale in Terminator: Salvation.

Since springing to international stardom, Worthington has kept exceedingly busy, putting another notch in his epic-scale franchise belt as Perseus in last year's Clash of the Titans remake, and this year, he's also committed to smaller, more intimate films such as the relationship drama Last Night with Keira Knightley.  Last month, he starred alongside Jessica Chastain and Helen Mirren in John Madden's The Debt, and he plays a determined rural cop in the dark police procedural Texas Killing Fields, arriving in theaters this Friday.  In a phone interview with journalists from all over the world promoting Texas Killing Fields, Worthington provided brief updates on his next mega-movies: the already-filmed Clash of the Titans 2, and the two eventual sequels to Avatar.

Thanks in no small part to films like Seven, police procedurals are most commonly associated with the grimy, foreboding environs of the big city, particularly when these procedurals involve the pursuit of possibly serial-killing murderers.  The upcoming thriller Texas Killing Fields stars Sam Worthington and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as two detectives, one from rural Texas and one from New York, attempt to track down a murderer who deposits his victims in a bayou known as a popular body-dumping site.

The first trailer for the film suggests that the desolate atmosphere of small-town Texas lends itself to the slow-build dread  of a serial killer-mystery just as well as an apathetic metropolis.  Also on hand in the trailer are Jessica Chastain and Chloe Moretz, who has dropped a body or two onscreen between her roles in Kick-Ass and Let Me In.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, best known for his turn as the sadistic Comedian in Watchmen, will play a different kind of badass in the action-thriller The Courier, which is being produced by Arclight Films. Hany Abu-Assad, whose 2005 Palestinian film Paradise Now received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film, is directing. Morgan is also executive producing.

In this exclusive iamROGUE interview, Zoe Saldana, Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Idris Elba share what they were listening to on the set of The Losers with ARTISTdirect.com's Rick Florino.