Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) works in the cybercrime division of the FBI. So rather than running around in the field tracking down criminals, she sits in front of a computer screen all day looking for online scams and Internet predators. Stealing someone's financial records or personal identity is bad enough, but Marsh's latest case involves something much darker and disturbing. She's told to go to a website called Kill With Me where she finds what appears a live video feed of a kitten being tortured. Next up is a human victim and just to make it interesting, the site's creator places the fate of each of his victims in the hands of public. The more hits his site gets, the faster the victim will die. At first Marsh's boss thinks the site is hoax. But Marsh's colleague Griffin Dowd (played by Tom Hanks' son Colin Hanks) and local cop Eric Box (Billy Burke) think otherwise. And when real corpses start showing up, Marsh finds herself in an elaborate cat and mouse game with an Internet predator who is, you guessed it, untraceable.
Diane Lane as Jennifer Marsh in Untraceable (Screen Gems)
Unlike Hostel, which placed the torture front and center in order to test how far into the dark side you were willing to travel, Untraceable tones down the torture so that it is less graphic and more of a plot device. But like Hostel , it wants to implicate the viewer as a kind of accomplice. These things wouldn't happen, both films suggest, if there wasn't an audience for it. But while Hostel embraced the horror genre, Untraceable wants to stay within the more respectable thriller formula. And formula is a key word here (and a word that seems to describe most of what's coming out at the moment). This is a formula police procedural tailored for an older female crowd but with hopes of luring in a male audience with the violence and Internet hook.
Diane Lane lends a classy air to the proceedings. She's not a twentysomething bimbo cast as eye candy. She's a skilled professional who brings warmth, appeal and a sense of intelligence to her roles. She gives us a character who actually feels grounded in the real world. As Marsh, she gives us a single mom who's balancing a demanding job with child-rearing, and doing a good job of both. She also gets to kick a little butt this time out. In what has become the new formula, she plays the woman in peril who gets to rescue herself. This is in the tradition of Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling outsmarting Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs.
Unfortunately, the rest of the film isn't up to Lane's abilities. Director Gregory Hoblit has fared better in his TV outings, contributing to such successful series as L.A. Law, Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blues. But none of his features -- Primal Fear, Frequency, Hart's War, Fracture -- have broken through the wall of formula fare. His best workwas the genuinely creepy supernatural thriller Fallen . With Untraceable , Goblit plays it by the book. He focuses on Marsh and emphasizes emotion and relationships in a way designed to appeal more to women than men. This is a touchy-feely crimer in which Marsh has to depend on her mom to provide daycare for her daughter, has time to reflect on her emotions about loss, and takes time to do family stuff like birthday parties for her daughter where FBI agents and cops attend.
Billy Burke and Diane Lane in Untraceable (Screen Gems)
The main culprit in the film's failure to rise about mediocrity lies in the script. Robert Fyvolent and Mark R. Brinker are newbies, while the third credited writer, Allison Burnett has a handful of unimpressive scripts to her credit. There is nothing particularly clever in their screenplay. The killer, when unveiled relatively early, proves unbelievably skilled and well-equipped. The killer gets every edge so that the story can last longer than half an hour. But the elaborate torture set ups and miraculously untraceable site strain credibility. Plus, they try to establish Marsh as a smart woman yet she repeatedly behaves in a manner that contradicts that. First of all, after showing us how dangerous the web can be and how easily someone can get your personal info, the film asks us to believe that Marsh would casually log on to the Kill With Me web site from home. Then, again knowing all the dangers of downloads and viruses, she doesn't even bat an eye when her daughter brings home a downloaded program from a friend and goes on line to open it up. Marsh just kisses her daughter on the head and says okay honey. This kind of inconsistency in Marsh' character weakens the film. All the other characters, from Burke's tough but sensitive cop to Hanks' geeky but lovable sidekick to Marsh's strong but silent mom are all cookie cutter characters.
As for the whole Internet component, it definitely has appeal and taps into our fears about not only what goes on on the web but also what people might be capable of doing. The killer turns out to be concerned too, and the sensational aspects of both the web and traditional media, with its hunger for shocking fare, are part of what this serial killer wants to bring attention to. But the film never makes the killer's psyche very interesting, and the Internet is used more as a gimmick than as a well-thought out thematic element.
Untraceable (rated R for grisly violence and torture, and some language) is like a decent TV procedural thriller. It tries to raise some interesting themes about our media saturated society and the unregulated Internet. But Gregory Hoblit and his team of mostly inexperienced writers fail to elevate these intriguing ideas to any level of depth or complexity. Untraceable is ultimately guilty of just being average. Log on if you want something familiar or if you are a fan of Lane's.
Companion viewing: Hostel, Silence of the Lambs, Breach, Fallen
And just for fun check out this list of hacker movies .
