Untraceable

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

Untraceable is a horrible movie. It doesn’t just settle for being a lame, ineffective thriller – it’s also hypocritical, half-witted, and way too violent.

The generally reliable Diane Lane stars as Jennifer Marsh, a widow with a young daughter, who works in the cyber crimes division of the FBI. One day her friend and co-worker Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) finds the website KillWithMe.com, a live video feed. It’s run by a kidnapper who places his victims in torture devices rigged to kill them more quickly based on the number of visitors the site gets.

Yes, the film hits all the notes you expect it to: Marsh’s ignorant superior holds a press conference telling people not to visit the site, which only draws more attention to it. There’s a direct threat to her family. Someone close to her is kidnapped. Blah blah.

But the movie is aiming higher – it’s also, of course, trying to be a message movie, ruminating on the evils of society and condemning our obsession with watching violent material. (In a tasteless attempt at real-world relevance, it even specifically references the video of Daniel Pearl’s murder.) The so-obvious-its-a-wonder-the-filmmakers-knew-how-to-tie-their-shoes hypocrisy is that the film itself is wildly violent; the murders are beyond gruesome in a variety of ways, and the camera is more than happy to linger on the gore in close-ups: ultraviolet lights burning a screaming victim to death, acid disintegrating another one’s skin, and the list goes on. I’m not exaggerating when I say the level of violence tops Saw - and this is supposed to be a sophisticated thriller aimed at mature adults, not seventeen-year-old gore-hounds.

The screenplay goes to great lengths to perfect its tech-heavy dialogue (Lane dutifully remembers a big monologue about sending a backdoor Trojan around a firewall, etc. etc.) but the film once again reveals its stupidity in the form of a counter on the website that lists “Active Viewers.” At one point, it’s stated that only people in the U.S. can visit the website (the film doesn’t bother to condemn foreigners, I guess), but we keep cutting back to the counter within seconds of each murder being committed: 15 million active viewers. 17 million. 20 million. That’s roughly 7% of the entire United States population that (a) has heard of the website (the film doesn’t indicate that people outside of Portland even know about it), (b) miraculously knew there was a murder being committed at that very moment, and (c) logged on and watched it happen. That’s not only technological ignorance; it’s awful math. It may seem like a small point, but it’s indicative of how frustratingly idiotic the movie is as a whole.

Then there are scenes like this: Diane Lane is driving her car. Her GPS system shuts off. Then her car shuts off. Then it locks her inside! Oh no - the bad guy is controlling her car!