You could be forgiven for rolling your eyes at the thought of Untraceable. The premise sounds suspiciously like one of those ‘torture porn’ flicks that so many, myself included, wish would just go away once and for all. Thankfully, the movie is far less graphic and nauseating than things like Saw and Hostel. It would hard - not to mention depressing - to think that director Gregory Hoblit (Primal Fear, ‘NYPD Blue’) and Oscar-nominated actress Diane Lane would be reduced to the torture porn genre, wouldn’t it? While clearly leagues better than those dispiriting gorefests, Untraceable nevertheless falls victim to one of the pitfalls of them: inherent silliness.
“UNTRACEABLE” is about a secret service agent, Jennifer Marsh, played by Best Actress Oscar nominee Diane Lane who gets caught in a very personal and deadly cat-and-mouse game with a serial killer who knows that people (being what they are - both curious and drawn to the dark side of things) will log onto an “untraceable” website where he conducts violent and painful murders LIVE on the net. The more people who log on and enter the website, the quicker and more violently the victim dies. This film explores that but not in a preachy way but in a way that is both intense, entertaining and thought-provoking.
Nominally, this is a story about a serial killer who rigs his victims to a torture device in front of a camera, streams the footage to the internet, and rigs it such that the more people watch the faster they die. After him are a pair of FBI cybercrime specialists (Diane Lane and Colin Hanks) and a police detective who is one of the most boring characters in cinema history (Billy Burke). One of the stops on their trail, for reasons too irrelevant to detail here, is the home of a creepy dude whose basement is full of pornography, sex toys, and other unseemly paraphernalia.
Star(s) to watch : Diane Lane (”Unfaithful”, “Streets of Fire”) as Jennifer Marsh, & Colin Hanks (”King Kong”) as Griffin Dowd.
Genre : Action, Thriller.
Release date : January 25, 2008
Rating : 8/10
Official website : http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/untraceable/index.html
Poster : http://www.comment4friends.com/images/untraceable.jpg
Trailer :
