Criminal forensic psychologist and detective Alex Cross is back
in Along Came A Spider. After being in retirement for almost a year after a
sting operation went bad and killed his partner, Cross is sitting at home
building model sailing ships until he gets a phone call from a man who has just
kidnapped Megan Ann Rose, the 12 year old daughter of a United States Senator.
Cross quickly records the phone conversation with the kidnapper, who wanted
Cross involved in the case so badly that he even leaves one of the shoes from
the abducted girl in Alex's mailbox as a means of letting him get inside the
Senator Rose's home and involved with the investigation.
When Alex arrives at Senator Rose's house, he meets Secret Service Agent Jezzie
Flannigan, who was in charge of security for Megan at the school the girl
attended. Gary Soneji, a teacher who worked at the exclusive school for the past
several years, abducted Megan. Since Megan was abducted on her watch, Jezzie is
on the outs with her superiors. She'll be lucky to get a gig directing traffic
thanks to this mess. Seeking to redeem herself, Jezzie asks Alex if she could be
his partner in the investigation of Megan's kidnapping. Alex reluctantly allows
her along, realizing that Jezzie probably knows more about the mysterious Soneji
than anybody. Alex and Jezzie are also in the same boat in that they are both
fighting to bounce back from cases they worked that had gone bad. Yet Megan's
kidnapping turns out to be anything but routine, and this case threatens to end
more than their careers this time out.
While Along Came A Spider is a gripping thriller that is well done, it lacks the
intensity of Kiss The Girls, the first Alex Cross film. Morgan Freeman is once
again excellent as Cross, and he is really the main reason to see this movie.
He gives a solid performance that is always worth watching, and is the perfect
centerpiece to rest the film's story upon. Michael Wincott is another good actor
who is also superb in this film as Soneji, the enigmatic villain. And then
there's Monica Potter, who really makes me miss Ashley Judd. Maybe it's not fair
to compare Ms. Potter to the divine Ms. Judd, who was so good in Kiss The Girls
as a real spunky spitfire who complimented Cross very well, and who shared such
a great on-screen chemistry with Freeman that she starred with him in another,
non-Cross movie called High Crimes, but the problem is that Monica gives such a
stone-faced performance in Spider that it looks as if she's not even trying to
make us forget Judd. If Potter's bland expression were anymore vacant, she would
be invisible. It's strange, because I've seen Potter act in other films, such
as the recent horror movie Saw, and she's really not a bad actress at all. In
any event, the DVD is pretty sparse in terms of special features. Other than a
13-minute fluff piece "making of" documentary, and a trailer, there's not much
else. Yet Along Came A Spider is still entertaining to watch, and makes for a
good double feature with Kiss The Girls. --SF
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