Cynical Cinema

Diane Lane is reason enough to watch just about any movie.  Not only is she a remarkable cougar and gorgeous, she is also a very fine actress who, like most other actresses of her calibre and stature, is forced to take lousy roles from time to time.  There are a few actors who have almost never done truly bad movies.  Tom Hanks springs to mind.  DeNiro, until about eight years ago.  But that is because high-calibre male actors can pick and choose their roles.  High-calibre actresses must take what comes along, even if that is Aeon Flux.  And Untraceable is on a par with that pile of junk.  Lane plays a cop who works at the cyber-crimes department, tracking down internet predators and so forth.  All of a sudden a guy shows up on the net, killing people online based on the number of hits his website receives.  The more hits it gets - the faster the man or woman he’s captured dies.  These deaths are all done with a series of creepy but unnecessarily complicated devices that display his flair for morbid showmanship while simultaneously commenting on society’s depravity. 

 Which is a fairly interesting premise.  The more people watch, the faster the guy dies, and of course more and more people will watch, because society and people are so horrible.  But the big problem with Untraceable is the bizarre disconnect between the cyber crimes unit of the police and the killer.  In fact, the killer ends up targetting that particular police department, for what appears to be…no reason at all!  Why would this guy, who wants to make a point about the evils of society’s depravity, and targets people who profit from that depravity (I hope I’m not giving too much away here - this movie scuks anyway), go after these cops?  Aren’t they the only ones who exist to take down the very people he’s raging against?  Aren’t they, in many ways, on the same side? 

So the only reason he might do so is that the people who made this movie thought it would be more exciting to put the stars in the precarious positions.  Like when CSI does one of those episodes where a member of their team is held prisoner somewhere, or targeted by a kidnapper or something.  And that’s what Untraceable is.  A long, poorly thought-out episode of CSI masquerading as an action movie with an attempt at a message.