Untraceable (2008)

"The whole world wants to watch you die, and they don't even know you."

UNTRACEABLE, for all its aspirations to being a harrowing psychological techno-thriller, ends up mostly flat and uninteresting. But, after SAW and Rob Zombie's terrifying flicks, maybe my threshold for the grotesque and the disquieting is now just too high. The visceral torture scenes in UNTRACEABLE invoke a sense of uneasiness, but the rest of the film simply can't maintain the squirmy suspense. It's too bad, because things do start out promisingly and ominously, and with a kitten.

Diane Lane and Colin Hanks play two federal agents working out of the FBI's Cyber Crimes Division who become part of a Portland task force assembled to catch a psychopath who conducts online torture and eventual murder of his abducted victims, all done on live streaming video. The hook to his website is that it's interactive. The more hits the site garners, the faster the torture goes, and the sooner the victim dies, thus rendering the viewer an accomplice to murder. As the FBI and the Portland police desperately pursue leads - but mostly flounder around, feeling helpless - the killer begins to engage them in a cat & mouse game. And soon, members of the task force find themselves targeted. Note that Diane Lane's character is a widowed single mom, so concerns regarding her cute and curious daughter surface quite early.

Here's a bit of a rant (sorry, dudes): There's a dubious credo subscribed to by a rude percentage of the web surfing community, that with the ability to anonymously log on comes a certain rush and also a rebuffing of consequences. The world wide web can often times bring out the utter crud in people. The most disturbing things in the film may have been the crudity and mean-spiritedness generated on the snuff site's chat room window. This is the morbid onlooker's syndrome as transferred online, and it is unsavory stuff. Is it in our DNA that we get our ya-yas gazing at horrifying things, that we can't at all avert our eyeballs? Me, I'm not really one to talk. I couldn't help watching the SAW films, and HOSTEL. Hell, eons ago, I even saw FACES OF DEATH. And, like most, I'll take an inquisitive peek at a roadside accident. It's genetics, right? Because if it is, then I'll feel better about watching so many low taste films.

It's like this. A film can flirt with snuff & torturerama and then can have the gall to sermonize about voyeurism and the growing desensitizing of the masses. Fine by me. But, by the hammer of Thor, that film had better not bore me! UNTRACEABLE, being not at all an edgy film, failed to engage me. It's certainly a far cry from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, or SE7EN, or even SAW. Just because a character in the film says mystifying things like "We're blackholing those IPs!" or "backdooring those Trojans," that does not a smart film make (and is it me or does "backdooring a Trojan" sound kinda not cool?). The film's weak elements serve to drag the whole thing down. Can't lay the blame too much on Diane Lane (although her character does some unclever things). Diane Lane is solid enough and lends a warmth to her character. But the rest of the cast is unremarkable (sorry, Tom Hank's son). There's a triteness to the story, a certain plodding blah-ness to it, and certainly no jaw-dropping twists. The website torture sequences are fraught with queasy tension and a certain sicko factor, so the film succeeds from that aspect. Yet the villain is unmemorable, and his identity really is revealed too early in the game (so there goes a chunk of the suspense). Typically, annoyingly, the agents are undermined by a self-serving and officious boss, and I only wish that he'd been kidnapped and tortured. Then there's the anticlimactic and unsatisfying showdown between Diane Lane and the killer, followed by the film ending rather abruptly. By that point, I didn't even mind. November 25, 2008

Serial Killer Thriller

"Untraceable," starring Diane Lane as Jennifer Marsh, head of the FBI Portland Cyber Crimes unit, uses as background gruesome, horrifically twisted crimes. This casts a dark cloud of foreboding over the proceedings.
A new website, KillWithMe.com, pops up with real images of a cat innocently lapping up milk from a saucer. The computer hacker has arranged that, the more people hit the website, the faster the cat will be killed through a contraption he's hooked up. Soon after, the stakes are raised when a human being appears on the website, his destiny linked to the number of curiosity seekers who tune in to watch. Teamed with local Portland police Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke), Jennifer races to close down the website and find the hacker/killer.
Despite all-out efforts on the part of the FBI and local police, the killer appears unstoppable. What's more, he seems to enjoy baffling the authorities while brazenly continuing his bizarre program of murder.
"Untraceable" is competently made and benefits from a solid, believable performance by Lane, a good supporting cast, and a series of disturbing set pieces depicting the assorted ways in which the killer lays the groundwork for his victims' demise. Because the deaths are keyed to hits by computer users, the victims are slowly tortured to death.
About halfway through the movie, however, the turf becomes all too familiar. As in countless thrillers before it, "Untraceable" switches gears into formula, making its resolution both predictable and disappointing.
Lane gives her character authority and intelligence. An early scene shows how effectively she does her job. When she is thoroughly perplexed and rendered helpless in the wake of this new, horrrifying crime, we see her frustration and determination to shut down the website and nail the perpetrator. So it's a game of wits, really, between Jennifer and the killer, whose identity is not revealed until halfway through the movie. Both are bright, both have the ability to checkmate the other's moves, and both are motivated to prevail.
Colin Hanks (Tom's son) plays Jennifer's cyber crimes partner, Griffin Dowd, whose job always seems to interfere with his attempts to meet interesting, eligible women. This is sort of a running gag in a film that is otherwise deadly serious in tone. Burke's Detective Box is the typical movie cop -- strong, resourceful, efficient, resolved, yet impotent because he's up against something he's never encountered before.
Compared to such recent movies as the "Saw" and "Hostel" franchises, "Untraceable" is fairly tame. It uses its grisly images as integral plot points, not as the centerpiece and raison d'etre. The images are disturbing, but without them, the movie would be just another TV flick. Screen violence is not always reprehensible. If handled with tact, it can underscore drama and add tremendous tension.
Rated R for strong images of violence and language, "Untraceable" is a well made thriller. Elevated by the presence of Diane Lane, it combines the procedural nature of "Zodiac," the cat-and-mouse interplay of "Silence of the Lambs," and the ghastly images of "Seven." November 17, 2008

Not for Cat or animal people

If you are a cat person to preserve your sanity do not watch this movie. At minimum skip the first 15 to 20 minutes. November 2, 2008

Untraceable (Blue Ray)

This movie was very intense. I couldn't watch the whole thing the first time. I just wasn't in the mood. The second time I watched with friends and it was intense, but it was very good. If you are squeamish at all don't watch this, but if you like suspense till the end than this is for you. October 19, 2008

I hope the real life FBI agents are smarter than these guys...

So many plot holes! If somebody was murdered by hundreds of heating lamps... maybe the FBI should try to find out who the heck bought all those lamps? If somebody got burned to death in a pool of sulfuric acid, maybe, just maybe, they need to find out who purchased tanks and tanks of sulfuric acid! It's not one of those everyday items you buy at your local walmart! Who the heck wrote this script? A middle schooler? Are you kidding me?

The main character, who is a trained FBI agent has no idea how to protect herself knowing that someone's out there to kill her! Her computer gets broken into...and she's supposed to be a cybercrime expert? Her car got broken into and reprogrammed (huh?) and now that it's started back up again.. she enters the freaking car without even checking it out! And of course the killer was hiding in the back seat the whole time! What????? Are you kidding me?

I understand what they're trying to say... yes, things are getting perverted and people are getting more and more desensitized. It's scary.. But come on... at least put some effort into writing a decent script...

And what's with the FBI agents cheering as the main character kills the killer at the end? Do they think it's a football game?

October 11, 2008

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