Gary Cole is an interesting actor.

He’s handsome in a distinguished way, even if he’s played some roles that have required him to play down his looks.  (Think about his perm in The Brady Bunch Movie or the glasses that he wore in Office Space.)  He’s not exactly movie star handsome but he’s definitely good-looking enough to be the star of his own detective series.  He’s got the authoritative voice of someone who you instinctively trust.  You look at Gary Cole and you see someone who knows what’s going on and who you would probably trust in a crisis.

At the same time, with just about every character that Cole has played, there’s always been a sign of something lurking behind the friendly smile and perfect haircut.  At the very least, there’s usually a hint of a threat concealed behind his polite manner.  Gary Cole is the ideal actor to play a character who has secrets to hide, whether he’s playing Mike Brady as someone who cheerfully offers up nonsensical advice or telling one of his employees that he’s going to need to come in over the weekend.  It’s hard to trust a character played by Gary Cole.  Cole has appeared in a wide variety of films and shows.  As anyone who has seen Veep can tell you, Gary Cole can be a very funny actor.  But where Gary Cole really shines is when he plays the bad guy who no one suspects is a bad guy.

In 2012’a An Officer and A Murderer, Gary Cole plays a very bad guy indeed, Russell Williams.  Williams is a colonel in the Canadian Air Force.  He’s such a highly respected figure that he was given the job of flying with the Queen of England when she last visited Ontario.  Williams has a big house in the suburbs.  He has a beautiful wife (played by Nahanni Johnstone).  His neighbors love him and they all say hi whenever he’s out for his morning run.  Williams had just been appointed the new commander of the local Canadian Air Force base.  He’s a respected and beloved figure who raises money for charity, mentors younger pilots, and seems like the ideal gentleman.

But at night, Russell Williams sneaks out of his house and breaks into the homes and apartments of single women.  He starts out as an underwear thief, obsessively cataloging all of the bras and the panties that he steals from each house.  Unknown to his wife, he has two suitcases filled with stolen underwear.  Occasionally, he even wears them himself.  The two detectives (played by Laura Harris and Rossif Sutherland) who investigate the break-ins theorize that the perpetrator is going to start to escalate his activities and Williams soon does just that. Williams assaults a young mother, blindfolding her and then filming her while he poses with her.  He breaks into another house and removes his clothes while he stares at the homeowner showering just a few feet away.  Eventually, two women are murdered.  The detectives suspect Russ but can they get him to slip up and give them the evidence that they need to arrest him?

An Officer and A Murderer is based on a true story, which makes it all the more disturbing to watch as Williams breaks into his neighbor’s homes and even tries to frame an innocent man for his crimes.  Watching this movie, I found myself wondering about all of the neighbors that I’ve had over the years.  Part of living in neighborhood is trusting the people around you but how well do we know the people who are living just a few houses or a few apartment away from us?  An Officer and a Murderer tells a sordid story and occasionally, it lingers over the details of Williams’s crimes to such an extent that you worry that Williams’s real-life victims are being exploited all over again.  That’s always an issue with films about real-life crimes.  That said, Gary Cole gave a genuinely frightening performance as Russell Williams and, if nothing else, the film reminded me to make sure that all of my doors and windows are locked tonight.