If today’s sick and stupid serial killer thriller is an example of what Hollywood writers have to offer, may that strike go on forever! More specifically, the committee of hack screenwriters credited for being responsible for this laughably contrived junk — Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker, and Allison Burnett – ought never be allowed to work again.
Why? Because, even with the presence of an acceptable Diane Lane in the lead role, “Untraceable” is unbearable.
Maybe it won’t seem that way to you, Mr. and Mrs. America. You’ve made several morbidly depraved TV crime procedurals into big ratings hits. So you probably won’t even be offended by a movie that tries to revel in its over-the-top gore while hypocritically condemning it too. Never mind the fact that few of the plot eventualities seem logistically possible.
“Untraceable” justifies its existence with what director Gregory Hoblit (“Primal Fear,” “Fracture”) and his writers apparently deem to be some kind of new profound message: The Internet is bad; and, we surfers are nothing but a bunch of perverse voyeurs.
The dude always destined to bite it in homicidal maniac whodunits like this, the protagonist’s sidekick played here by Tom’s scion Colin Hanks as fellow FBI cyber crimes investigator Griffin Dowd, refers to his computer when he says: “It’s a jungle in here.”
He is cautioning us about the nasty content of that darned World Wide Web even as we in the audience are invited to drool as peeping toms with a mystery torturer at a fictional Web site called killwithme.com. It features diabolically cruel devices to off people that are triggered by the number of hits the site gets. The faster that multitudes of people log on, the quicker the killer’s mutilating contraptions work. Thus, the curious masses are his accomplices.
Lane is single mother/crusading law enforcer Jennifer Marsh. Based in Portland, Ore., she is in charge of the task force to find and bring down the local bad guy who is murdering in real time on the Web. Predictably, it soon gets personal for Jennifer. The villain toys with her little girl. Eventually, he somehow —magically! — demonstrates the ability to hack into this computer expert’s own home computer as well as her SUV’s electrical system and her cell phone signal with perfect timing.
As someone who can’t even get my brand new MacBook to get online reliably, I found these flights of fancy particularly hard to swallow.
But common sense is beside the point in “Untraceable.” It’s more about the audience’s groaning, its rubbernecking deviancy as the filmmakers’ show someone being ever more gradually fried to death by heat lamps or someone else’s flesh being slowly melted off his body by means of a water tank infused with battery acid.
If this sounds like your idea of a good time at the movies, then by all means have at “Untraceable.”
‘Untraceable’
*
» Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks
» Director: Gregory Hoblit
» Rated R for grisly violence and torture, some language
» Running time: 100 minutes
