Untraceable
(2008)
review by A.J. MacReady

Into the dog days of January, which studios often treat as a dumping ground for cinematic tripe (Meet The Spartans is # 1?  What the hell, people?), we are treated to the joys of serial killing gone high-tech with Untraceable.  It's a fairly by-the-numbers thriller, rainy and washed-out, but efficently executed and competently made.
           
FBI agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane, certainly getting older but still beautiful and fiercely talented) works out of the field office in Portland, Oregon as part of the Cyber Crimes division, tracking down Net criminals who enjoy pastimes such as identity theft and the like.  One night Marsh and her partner Griffin (Colin Hanks) get a tip about a website, KillWithMe.com, that purports to specialize in a different kind of crime - they discover live, streaming video of a kitten caught on a glue trap, slowly starving to death.  Soon there is footage of a man with mere superficial wounds that begin to bleed more profusely than they should; he's been hooked up to an IV that's adding an anti-coagulant agent into his blood.  As it turns out, the more hits the site gets and the more viewers tune in, the more solution is added to the IV and the faster the man begins to bleed out - from his nose, mouth, ears, eyes. . .
           
Very quickly Marsh and her colleagues - along with the cooperation of the Portland PD, represented by Det. Eric Box (Billy Burke) - discover that the unknown killer is not only smarter than they are in terms of hiding his tracks, making it impossible to find him, but that he knows exactly who it is who is tracking him down.  Cue the games of cat-and-mouse as Marsh tries to catch the killer before the list of his victims grows to include her friends, her family, or herself.
           
Untraceable isn't a horrible picture by any means, but it's certainly not great.  Ever since his feature debut Primal Fear, director Gregory Hoblit has more or less been cranking out this sort of professionally done suspense thriller for audiences (see last year's Fracture).  They are what they are and that's pretty much where it begins and ends.  Although, in fairness, I must admit a great deal of fondness for Frequency, which is far and away his best film (for me, anyway).  He grabs some talented technicians behind the camera, puts a few good actors in front of it - even if Billy Burke sometimes resembles a talking piece of furniture - and gets it done.  Diane Lane does what she can with her part, which isn't particularly strongly written, so it helps that she's able to convey a certain level of toughness and vulnerability within the character.  Colin Hanks is perfectly adequate and likeable enough in his thankless role as sidekick.  And the actor playing the killer - the movie makes his identity known roughly 40 minutes or so into the flick but still, I don't care to give it away - isn't revelatory, but he's got a creepy edge to him and seems like he could be proficient enough at the computer game aspect of it as well as the not-TOO-elaborate torture and death devices.
           
Some people will write this movie off as being simply a bigger studio product trying to cash in on the "torture porn" (God, I am tired of hearing that, can we retire it already?) craze that's hit lately; I don't entirely disagree, but Untraceable is certainly nowhere near as lurid as something like Hostel or Saw, or as utterly inane as the worthless Captivity.  It's more or less working in the debt of something like, say, Seven - without being anywhere NEAR as good, but it's really kind of unfair to expect it to be.  It plays off of our continuous use of the Internet and the phenomenon of people watching video after video of horrible, grotesque events simply because they can; a modern-day freak show that not only promises the blood and guts but has the balls to deliver it to us.  Certain scenes in the flick made me think of a friend of mine who, months back, called me over to look at his computer screen where he had the cell-phone footage of Saddam Hussein's hanging playing in all its grainy glory; I turned away.  Not that Saddam was a great guy or whatever, I just didn't feel the need to watch him die.  But lots of people do.  And I have NO doubt that if some sick fuck put up a site like this, there'd be a lot of similarly sick bastards all over it.  Just how it is, I suppose.  So the conceit is something that hasn't been done before, or at least not like this, using our modern technology in such a way.
           
Overall, not a bad flick.  Untraceable sets out a fairly simple premise and sticks to it, without too many red herrings or the hackneyed crap that most of the lesser thrillers tend to wallow in.  For example, Marsh lives with her mother and young daughter, who you just KNOW are only in the movie to be placed in mortal danger so Marsh can save one or both of them at the film's climax, right?  You'd be surprised how that works out.  Diane Lane is still very good at what she does, Hoblit does what he does with a modicum of fuss, and they serve up a perfectly acceptible popcorn B-movie.  At the very least, it's GOT to be far superior to Meet The Spartans.