DVD REVIEW: Untraceable
By: Scott Rader
5/19/2008
This movie isn't that bad. It's out of touch, but Untraceable is an interesting enough high-tech thriller/Saw-esque torture flick.
Diane Lane stars as Jennifer Marsh an agent of the FBI cyber crimes unit. Recently a website has popped up called "Kill With Me." Basically everyone who log on to the site brings a victim one step closer to death. The more hits the site gets, the faster the victim dies.
Pretty scary stuff, especially in our grotesquely curious society. It seems all too real that a site like this would garner enough curiosity to "get the job done." Just think of the "2 Girls, 1 Cup" phenomenon. Yes, Americans have to see sick stuff for themselves, even if they know they can't stomach or don't want to be part of the problem.
That's where Untraceable succeeds.
Where it fails is in being as relevant as it pretends to be. It wants to claim to be in touch with the high-tech world, and, in fact, that is how it succeeds in being scary. That something like this could happen. But it would help if it had current technology or used lingo properly. It doesn't seem as reliable as it wants to because of this. For starters, blog and chat are not interchangeable words. They are different things. And a high-tech computer hacker using Windows Picture Viewer? That just doesn't seem plausible.
Oh well, Untraceable holds the attention quite well. But also begs the question: why the hell isn't Colin Hanks in more movies?
