Watch the trailer: http://movies.aol.com/movie/untraceable/27203/main
Why do I offer links to reviews? It's not that I don't trust my own thoughts but sometimes somebody can say what I'm thinking better than me. I'm not one to regurgitate or paraphrase another's work so it's better to give credit where credit is due. I will read some reviews before seeing a movie because I want to know why the reviewer liked or hated it. You can learn a lot from a good review or a bad one if the reviewer backs his reasons. Sometimes I've seen movies that received poor reviews just to see if I agreed with them. Some were better than expected. I've also seen movies that I thought were overrated. However, If the reviewer sparks my interest to make me want to see the movie, then he's done his job.
Untraceable has been getting mixed reviews so I decided to see for myself. It's easy to dismiss this as a Silence of the Lambs clone but you can say that about almost every one of these cat & mouse, psycho-killer thrillers that followed it. Some are better than others and this one is no better or worse in plot and suspense. The gimmick here is the killer's website where the more viewers logging in to watch his grisly executions, the faster they proceed online in real time. Diane Lane gives a routine but likable performance as an FBI agent tracking the killer and her best moment is saved for the end as she shows us she's one tough cookie who will not let the killer have his way. The rest of the cast is perfunctory in filling out the needs of the story.
I was hesitant to see a movie that sounds like torture porn. Luckily the filmmakers don't swell on these scenes and there was enough suspense to keep me interested to the end. Much of the plot and characters in Untraceable are predictable as you've seen this type of story before and on network TV every week, but that's to be expected in this kind of movie. Here's a review that tweaked my interest in seeing it: http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/01/25/movies/25untr.html?ref=movies
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