'Untraceable' ponderous crime drama
Even on the level of cheap torture porn, "Untraceable" makes for one remarkably ponderous and ugly Internet crime drama.
Not only do America's smartest law enforcement officers make the dumbest decisions in this movie, the FBI's sexiest agent, Jennifer Marsh, spends a lot of time taking showers in a stall with a virtually opaque glass door. What's the point?
The plot begins in Portland, Ore., where local FBI cyber-crime agents Marsh (Diane Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) get tipped off about a Web site, killwithme.com. It shows abducted victims being slowly killed on streaming live video.
The more people who call up the site, the faster the victim dies in painful, ridiculously bizarre ways that would impress the twisted Jigsaw from the "Saw" movies. One man gets slowly bled to death before the unblinking lens of a cyber-camera. Another gets baked by a zillion sunlamps.
Marsh tries to disable the site, but the person behind it is too resourceful and omniscient. When she shuts down one killwithme.com, it pops up instantly someplace else, but only on computer screens in the United States.
"How patriotic!" Dowd quips.
A Portland police detective named Eric Box, a nearly superfluous character played by a nondescript Billy Burke, joins the feds on their hunt for the murderous webmaster.
With its broadcast of human death as entertainment, "Untraceable" recalls last year's "The Condemned," in which 44 million viewers tuned in to watch Stone Cold Steve Austin and other prisoners hunt and kill each other on a tropical island outfitted with hundreds of cameras.
Fortunately for Marsh, the Internet Killer isn't on an island; he's practically down the street in Portland, a real convenience not only for her, but the filmmakers as well. The villainous Owen Riley is played by Joseph Cross, who channels Anthony Perkins' Norman Bates with eerie aplomb.
Like Hannibal Lecter, Riley is methodically super smart. He uses computers to get anything he needs. He can even take over car computers.
Marsh figures out that Riley's bizarre killings are not random acts, but a calculated campaign of revenge she has no connection to. Still, she inexplicably winds up being a featured victim on killwithme.com. Why her?
"You let them say and do whatever they want!" Riley whines at Marsh. So the FBI can't control what people say and do? That's why he wants to kill her with a rototiller on live streaming video?
Three writers contributed to this unappetizing, color-deadened movie with cringe-inducing dialogue that Lane throws out with undeserved conviction: "I'm good at a lot of things, but I'm bad at losing people!"
"Untraceable" frequently swerves off the road of credulity, until the end, when it slides off a cliff. Marsh starts acting like a bimbo in a horror film. (Note to all FBI agents: Check the back seats of your cars before you get in.)
This drama, directed with minimum tension and suspense by Gregory "Fracture" Hoblit, wags a self-righteous finger at bloodthirsty America for indulging in its appetite for reality TV gone wild.
Had any intelligence or thought been placed behind this exploitative subject matter, "Untraceable" could have been a "Silence of the Lambs" for a new generation.
Instead, Hoblit's movie chastises us for "enjoying" the human suffering it gleefully dishes out, then seems oblivious to the scariest point it actually makes: The 30 million Americans who tune in to watch Marsh be killed by a lawn implement might be voting for our next president.
"Untraceable"
1½out of four
Opens today
Diane Lane as Jennifer Marsh
Billy Burke as Eric Box
Colin Hanks as Griffin Dowd
Joseph Cross as Owen Riley
Written by Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker and Allison Burnett. Produced by Steven Pearl, Andy Cohen, Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi and Hawk Koch. Directed by Gregory Hoblit. A Screen Gems release. Rated R (extreme violence, language). Running time: 100 minutes.