Crispini reviews "Untraceable" (on DVD) - spoilers

[crispini]

First let me say that this movie was decent in the first part and then was COMPLETELY RUINED by a couple of plot points. I have never before seen a movie that managed to snatch utter FAIL from the jaws of victory like this one did.

So the premise behind this movie is some serial killer is offing people by broadcasting them dying on the Internet and by various contraptions, the more hits he gets on his website, the faster the victim dies. Pretty good premise. The female lead detective can act and it's shaping up to be a pretty standard, entertaining police procedural, albeit a bit on the gory side.

Anyway, so it's near the end and by some really stupid trick the bad guy managed to trap the heroine cop by HIDING IN THE BACK OF HER CAR. :WTF: like any cop's going to fall for that when she knows the dude's stalking her. It was such a lame-o move. And then he's trying to kill her live on webcam and the entire perverted internet is tuned in and of course there's a big fight. Blah blah blah action-cakes, she kicks his ass and shoots him and we're all like, YAY. And then she SHOWS HER BADGE to the webcam.

What.
The.
Fuck.

You know, I actually felt sorry for the people who made this movie because they were so close to making a pretty decent films and it took exactly two plot points and about 3 minutes of screentime to turn this baby into a real stinker. I'm glad I got it out of the redbox and only paid a buck because any more than that I would have felt ripped off. Two thumbs down. What a stinkeroo! Two thumbs down.

[Mayberry Machiavelli]

1. Was this the one with Diane Lane? She's hawt, but still... looked like it might be dumb.

:hi:

[crispini]

4. It was. She was very good.

But she couldn't save it from the poor decisions of the scriptwriter or the producer or whoever it was.

Show your badge to the webcam, my ass. :eyes:

[Zavulon]

2. What was actually worse

was that the "hiding in the back of her car" thing was shown in the trailer.

I loved the movie up to that point, and then started uttering obscenities from that point on.

[crispini]

3. That was exactly our reaction!

It totally amazed me how two bad plot points could totally derail a film. They did a good job with the technical piece of it and it was quite suspenseful and well-done, but at that point, it just went south in a big way.

[Zavulon]

5. The one thing I did find enjoyable

was the chat room messages and how well done they were. They did a perfect job of capturing the sort of psycho messages we've all come to expect, such as "burn baby burn" and "a genius died today."

[crispini]

6. Exactly. It was a comparatively small part of the movie,

but it did a nice job of capturing the Internet culture. I could totally imagine the arguments going on in other forums about whether or not to watch. Actually, I do have my doubts that that many people would tune in. The channers, yes, but the rest of us? :shrug:

[Zavulon]

7. I do not doubt that lots of people would drum up such a site.

I only know I wouldn't be one of them.

[Zavulon]

8. By the way,

have you ever seen the site Sony put up to keep fans of the movie amused?

http://www.killwithme.com/

Not to be confused with the official movie site (http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/untraceable/), this used to have puzzles for you to solve. Now it just tells you how many people ignored the "logging on may hurt innocent people" warning.

[crispini]

9. Hahaha. "87% of you ignored the warning."

Seriously, though, anyone going to that site knows it's a movie promo. I, like you, have no doubt that LOADS and loads of people would go to the site ... but at the end there, the movie was "showing" that the site had 18 million, 27 million streams, etc. I don't know, maybe I think better of human nature, because there certainly are plenty of sickos around who like to watch that stuff, but I would think only a million or two would tune in to the strea for real. Especially once the word got out that it was real. Maybe I'm just idealistic. :shrug: