Movie Review - 'Untraceable'

Untraceable

Starring Diane Lane, Billy Burke and Colin Hanks
Directed by Gregory Hoblit
Rated PG-13

Not much more than a Saw movie aimed at more delicate adult sensibilities, Untraceable is a mostly serviceable potboiler that can't scare you so it tries to make you flinch or squirm. It does a good job, if you can't bear to watch someone sit in battery acid until it rips off their flesh or if you can't stand the sight of someone being torched and scorched by heat lamps.

These are the tricks of a new kind of serial killer, one who is so adept at internet technology that his website can't be traced, even by the most sophisticated of cyber crime detectives (Diane Lane and Colin Hanks). This killer posts streaming video of his victims online, and the more people that watch the video, the quicker the victim will perish.

It's supposed to be a comment on our culture, to some extent, and there may be something to that, but in terms of setting up a movie, it's just a gimmick, one that bears no more fruit the second or third or fourth time the film resorts to it.

Lots of staples of the serial killer movie are here: The dank basement, the visit by authorities to the wrong house, the stalking of the investigating officer by the killer, and the use of a female cop to elicit sympathy. As we discussed with the recent 27 Dresses, movies that double dip themselves in the requisites of their given drama have average odds of succeeding. All you need to add are some interesting scenes or a character you don't expect and the movie may just bump itself up into the above average category.

Untraceable doesn't do that. It throws around impressive jargon impressively (to show you it did lots of research), but the film weaves an unbelievably ludicrous motive for its killer and barely makes us care for Diane Lane. It's not Lane's fault. She's actually a redeeming quality here, as she is in most films not named Must Love Dogs. There's just simply no emotional construction for the character.