"Untraceable"

Since there has not been much out there in the theaters as of late I have wanted to see, my web site has suffered a little, but I did get out to see a movie that opened this past weekend. All of you that have checked out my web site before already know that I love a good serial killer movie so when I heard about “Untraceable,” I knew straight away regardless of the critic’s reviews that I would be going to see it.

As usual the critics decimated this film, but as I read reviews from people that had actual gone to see the movie, I noticed that there were quite a few that enjoyed, so here is my 2 cents regarding “Untraceable”

Diane Lane, plays the main character in this story, Jennifer Marsh. She is a single mother living with her daughter and mother in the greater Portland area. Jennifer is an FBI agent, working for the internet department. She spends her time working the night shift catching bad guys that like to steal people’s identities, and all manor of scum of the World Wide Web.

Some one tips off the local authorities on a web site called “Kill with me” dot com. The web site first pops up streaming live a poor little defenseless being killed. While grotesque and sad, the operator of the web site has set himself up in a way that he can not be located or traced in any way, hence the name “Untraceable.” The story starts to run wild when the web site pops up again with a live stream of a man slowly being tortured, and the catch is, the more people that log onto the web site to watch, the faster the man dies. This is about as far as I can go without playing the spoiler.

Lane does a decent job with her character, but for the most part this movie just doesn’t cut the mustard, and in a couple different ways plagiarizes straight from other movies. I think the best way to describe this film, would be a cross between “Fear.com” and “Silence of the lambs.” Unfortunately, this story does not come close to either of those films. While watching this film you pretty much get the feeling throughout the entire time that you’ve seen this all before, and you would be right.

Although director Gregory Hoblit has quite a few nice feathers in his cap, this will not be one of them. To successfully market and sell a good serial killer movie, your story, characters, and plot must be original, and as hard as it has become, it must be a fresh look at these sick people that wander the earth. This story just does not meet any of these criteria, and sadly I have to end up agreeing with most of the critics this time, mores the pity. While I do not endorse paying the big money to see this movie on the big screen, it would probably be a good rental when it comes out on DVD. There were some good scenes that would make it worthy of watching at home.

My rating for this movie is 6.5 out of 10.00