Diane Lane and Billy Burke star in UNTRACEABLE(2008).
© Sony/Screen Gems
Title: Untraceable
Rating: R
Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross
Writers: Robert Fyvolent,Mark Brinker and Allison Burnett, story by Robert Fvyolent & Mark Brinker
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Distributor: Sony/Screen Gems
UNTRACEABLE
By: Rachel Reitsleff, ColumnistReview Date: Friday, February 01, 2008
Bringing up a director’s track record is not always fair, but in this case, it’s relevant – if you’ve liked Gregory Hoblit’s work on Primal Fear, Frequency and Fracture, chances are good you’ll also like Untraceable, another in a line of solid thrillers from this filmmaker. There are a couple of caveats. One is that Untraceable has some Hostel-like scenes of torture (albeit the motives for the killer’s actions are different); the other is that Untraceable’s combination of methods and message are debatable.
We’re in Portland, Oregon, where police direct the F.B.I.’s attention to a kitten being tortured in real time on the Internet – the animal has been identified as belonging to local man. Although the F.B.I. station chief doesn’t take much note of it, special agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) does, partly because she’s a cat owner, partly because she knows that serial killers of humans tend to start with animals and partly because she’s in charge of the Portland F.B.I.’s cyber crime division. Sure enough, the killer moves up to humans a week later, showing a man’s torture and death on an Internet site called KillWithMe.com. Marsh, her partner Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) and police detective Eric Box (Billy Burke) try to track the murderer, who is brilliant at obscuring his cyber-tracks. As his list of victims grows, our sleuths try to figure out if there’s a connection between the killer’s targets. Inevitably, the hunters become the hunted.
Hoblit and writers Robert Fyvolent & Mark Brinker and Allison Burnett, working from Fyvolent & Brinker’s story, set up a good rhythm, with a nicely-drawn and beautifully played central character in Lane’s Marsh. Lane actually seems like someone who could be in law enforcement, warm but with real toughness. There’s a good sense of growing tension, the clues add up and it builds to a viscerally satisfying denouement.
However, the filmmakers want to point the finger at people who are entertained by “reality” and/or violent programming. While there certainly are sadists tuning in to a wide variety of material, most people who watch horror films don’t actually want to see snuff, much less encourage it. Likewise, there’s a difference between people who tune in to, say, Survivor and those who would intentionally watch a murder. Conflating these two discussions only makes it blurrier. Apropos of the above, it should be noted that while the torture of characters is intense, the abuse of the kitten happens off-camera (we see the kitten emerge from a pet carrier, and then the image is frozen and pixilated). Before anybody writes in about a schism in depicting animal pain vs. human pain, presumably everybody watching the movie knows that the human characters are played by actors, who have consented to be paid to pretend to have things happen to them that are achieved by special effects. A kitten can’t pretend. Hoblit and Co. wisely didn’t want to violate the animal cruelty laws or make us wonder what the hell actually happened on set (with the humans, we admire the actors and the makeup effects artists for excellence in their respective crafts).
Gruesome and intense, Untraceable is smart and engrossing, even if it may make you want to argue with someone about what it all means once it’s over.
