Untraceable
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Movie Reviews of Untraceable
Movie Review: Untraceable
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a horrifying thriller, smart and tightly told, and merciless. If you've enjoyed any recent thriller/horror/suspense movies there's a good chance you'll really enjoy this movie.Movie Review: Filmed where I work
Summary: 5 Stars
Most of this film was filmed at the company I work for and a couple of the extras work with me as well...Movie Review: Surfing the Web for Murder
Summary: 4 Stars
The Internet is capable of many things, some of them good, some of them bad; "Untraceable" is a film that shows not only its ugly side, but the ugly side of humanity, as well. This is an unnerving, suspenseful film that doesn't skimp on social commentary, and this is despite the fact that it hurts like hell to hear it. I knew that I was supposed to feel absolutely icky walking out of the theater, but I had no idea I'd feel that way as soon as the film started: it begins in a dimly lit, grimy basement, where an unseen person begins torturing a kitten. Using a camcorder, this person transmits this awful footage to a live video feed on the Internet. The website--called killwithme.com--is soon up and running, and under mysterious circumstances, it comes to the attention of Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane), an FBI agent from Portland, Oregon specializing in Internet criminals. She's obviously disgusted by a website showing a tortured animal, but she has yet to learn what it means or even how the website operates.
That quickly changes. The next victim is a shirtless man who's had the website's name carved into his chest. An IV automatically pumps a decoagulant into his body, which prevents his blood from clotting. This means that he'll bleed to death, despite the fact that his chest wounds are relatively minor. But this isn't the worst of it; Marsh soon realizes that the speed of the IV drip is directly related to the number of hits the website gets. In a nutshell, the more hits, the faster the man dies. Sure enough, the hits just keep on coming, and within six hours, the man is dead. Marsh is immediately frustrated because she can't shut the site down--every time she tries, it bounces to a mirror site on a different server and continues to run. It also relies on an original Russian server, meaning the United States has no jurisdiction. In essence, killwithme.com is an untraceable website.
Marsh quickly understands that this case is going to require a lot of planning and precise execution. Assigned to the case with her is Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke)--they both believe that whoever is running the website is purposely seeking attention, and what better way to get it than with press conferences and news reports? An uptight FBI director (Peter Lewis) publicly announces that anyone who visits the website is an accomplice to murder, and of course, his words have the exact opposite effect. That's because there's now a third victim being broadcast on the website, and the hits are greater than they ever were before. I won't continue to describe what the killer actually does to these people, but it's safe for you to assume that, with each person, the methods get more and more unpleasant to watch.
Things take a personal turn when Marsh's daughter, Annie (Perla Haney-Jardine), says that a video of their house is being shown on the computer. Marsh runs outside to find an abandoned car with a camera hooked to the antenna and a dead body in the trunk. Clearly, whoever is running killwithme.com has tapped into her computer's personal files. How and why, she doesn't know. But she'd better find out soon, because the website is featuring yet another victim; as this new person suffers for everyone to see, Marsh finally realizes that each victim is somehow connected to the killer.
But who exactly is the killer? That's the obvious question for any murder mystery, and most of the time, we have to wait until the end for the big revelation. This isn't the case with "Untraceable." The audience actually learns the killer's identity early on--it's more a matter of the characters not knowing until the end. It's also a matter of figuring out the killer's motives, because we all know that a motive makes a murder mystery much more satisfying (although not necessarily more realistic). But in all honesty, the killer's identity is not what drives the story; this film is without a doubt a critical commentary on Internet technology, showing how something so benign can be used to showcase evil things. A minor subplot involves a secret DVD stash of snuff films and suicides--I know perfectly well that such DVDs actually exist and that there's a market for them. What does that say about humanity? Why do we like to watch that horrible stuff? The website in "Untraceable" is not a reflection of a screenwriter's twisted imagination, but of the reality that certain people would happily visit it if it were real.
The film's only weakness is the lack of developed relationships. Marsh is established as a workaholic who rarely spends time with her daughter. Marsh's mother, Stella (Mary Beth Hurt), does most of the nurturing. But not enough of this was shown; at a certain point, both Annie and Stella are sent away for their protection, and we never see them again, which is bad since they could have added so much more to the story. For some, the scenes of torture and murder will be too disturbing to watch, as this movie (correctly) steers clear of campy gore. I know that the image of that poor kitten will haunt me forever, which almost makes me wish I hadn't seen this film in the first place. But when taking into account the clever plot, the tense atmosphere, and the harsh social commentary, it becomes clear that "Untraceable" is too effective to overlook.
Movie Review: Diane Lane shines in this dark, gripping, thriller . . .
Summary: 4 Stars
In Untraceable (2008), the darkest side of the cyber world, becomes horrifyingly real, as a computer whiz uses an online audience in the execution of his scheme for revenge. Diane Lane is Jennifer Marsh, an agent working at the FBI's Portland office, whose job is to pursue various types of cyber crimes. March and her co-worker Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks), run across a website called killwithme.com, which features the torture kill of a cat. Looking into the website, the agents discover that the location is actually somewhere in the Portland area, but through a process which exploits servers in foreign locations, the website is untraceable, and cannot be shut down or located. Matters takes a radical turn, when a pilot is abducted, and in a live feed to the internet, bleeds to death, with a contribution from the online audience.
The FBI combines forces with the local police, as Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke), begins working with Marsh. Both agencies pursue leads, but are unable to get anything solid before the killer strikes again. A television reporter, trapped in a block of concrete, is roasted alive by heat lamps, again with a contribution from a growing online audience. The killer takes a personal interest in Jennifer Marsh, and the FBI team, infiltrating Marsh's home computer and sending a live video feed of her daughter to her computer, and leaving a car with a scorched corpse, cross the street from her home. When Dowd gets too close to a breakthrough, he finds himself tied down to a chair in a glass tank, filled to chest level with water. As the online audience grows, more and more acid is mixed in, creating an acid bath that dissolves the skin from the bone. It's a very painful and gruesome way to go.
Marsh sends her family away for safety. Griffin Dowd left a dying clue, and March puts the puts the pieces together, enabling the FBI to identify the killer (Joseph Cross). However he has one more play to make, and when Jennifer fails to check the back seat of her SUV, she unexpectedly finds herself hanging upside down over a set of spinning blades. The killer's mistake is not fully immobilizing his victim, making him the unexpected star of his final production.
Multi Emmy award winning director Gregory Hoblit, has crafted a dark, grim, and compelling thriller. The dank, wet, climate of Portland, contributes to the bleak, dreary atmosphere with washed out colors. The kills are diabolically creative and horrific, dramatically executed by a coldly unemotional killer. It is kind of hard to believe that someone so young, is so skilled, in so many areas. There are some other problems with the plot, the main one being why the killer takes such a personal interest in Marsh, and the FBI team from such an early point. This kind of turn is frequently used to add tension, so while hardly a surprise, it is still a questionable route for the writers to follow. Diane Lane is a fabulous A-list actress, and her very believable, gut level performance, does help to smooth over some of the rough spots in the credibility department. The story is fleshed out with details concerning Marsh's personal life, but the focus is never far from the case. Colin Hanks is very good as the quirky Griffin Dowd. Billy Burke and Joseph Cross, also turn in very solid performances. Displaying a wide acting range, Lane makes you feel her character's emotions, even when it is just sympathy for a cat. However, the final teeth gritting badge flashing scene, is rather reminiscent of a showboating wide receiver.
The DVD has a nice set of extra features, including a commentary track by Gregory Hoblit, producer Hawk Koch, and production designer Paul Eads. The conversation is not particularly animated, but there is some good background information. There is actually an FBI office located in Portland, and the producers tried to come up with some creative torture kills, and be accurate regarding law enforcement procedures and the pursuit of cyber crimes. Untraceable is a fast paced, high tension thriller, that mostly avoids cliché, with creative use of graphic violence, and quality special effects. In a genre that often has disappointments, Untraceable delivers the goods.
Movie Review: A lot of people didn't like this, but I'm not one of them.
Summary: 4 Stars
Untraceable (Gregory Hoblit, 2008)
Untraceable is a movie that made me vaguely uncomfortable, and I couldn't quite put my finger on why until I read the best/worst of 2008 lists at Dread Central, where one of the reviewers there handed it to me (never let it be said that I don't give credit where credit is due); he called it the hypocrisy of the movie, the idea that this is a movie about watching, and contributing to, evil while turning its viewers into voyeurs themselves. (He put it much better than I just did; I don't have the article to hand to directly quote.) That said, I think maybe that reviewer missed the point a bit; I got the idea that this was a conscious decision by director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear) and screenwriters Robert Fyvolent (his first credit), Mark Brinker (also debuting here), and Allison Burnett (Autumn in New York).
The movie is the story of Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane), an FBI cybercrimes investigator. During a seemingly unrelated investigation, she stumbles upon a website whose premise is revolting, yet fascinating--a person is restrained in some way, and destined for a grisly end, with the rate at which the person will die is determined by the number of hits the website gets. Everyone who logs on, then, takes part in the murder, albeit indirectly. Once she starts tracking the guy, he finds out who she is and begins tracking her as well, turning the investigation into a game of cat and mouse; which will get to the other first?
I've been a fan of Diane Lane's for a long, long time (I first saw her in Lady Beware some two decades ago and was instantly captivated), and it's the rare Lane movie that I end up not liking. Such is the case here; I did find it an effective thriller, though some of its plot twists were all too predictable (you just know that a member of her team is going to end up in the chair at one point, because hasn't that plot twist been used in dozens of thrillers over the years?). The thing that truly makes it effective, I think, is exactly that aspect of the film that the Dread Central reviewer called hypocrisy; the idea that we film viewers are voyeurs, especially those of us who are drawn to the darker side of film. I thought the writers of this movie, adapted from an original story by Fyvolent and Brinker, were using that voyeurism idea to explore the concept that, perhaps, being drawn to darker thrillers, slasher films, and that sort of thing, which is usually viewed as a harmless, or cathartic, form of escapism is perhaps something more. It does tread a line that I find objectionable, in that it cleaves uncomfortably to the same mindset that allows people to charge that heavy metal music or Dungeons and Dragons or whatever leads to people killing each other (which is, despite its prevalence, just a ludicrous idea; if you lend it any credence, you can safely dismiss this review, as we're coming from opposite directions when viewing this movie). But I don't believe the script in any way goes over this line, and that makes all the difference. It's a clearheaded examination of this phenomenon, and I think the choice of the killer makes it relatively clear that the writers weren't trying to use him as synecdochic of an entire society (which would have been problematic, obviously, given the cause-and-effect argument I mentioned above). So, yes, there's an hypocrisy here, but I don't think it's an hypocrisy on the part of the writers; I think they were examining an hypocrisy that's endemic to our society and goading us to think about it.
I liked it. I know a lot of people didn't, so I expect your mileage will vary, but I think it's worth a rental. *** ½