Diane Lane stars as Jennifer Marsh, an FBI agent based in Portland, Oregon. She’s part of the cyber-crimes unit, which tracks internet crimes. Jennifer and her unit--which includes Colin Hanks, son of Tom--are extremely adept at tracking down identity thieves and porn sleaze. But they get a real challenging case for the books when a serial killer starts abducting victims and tortures them live on the net. The victims are usually strapped to some sort of deadly gizmo that’s rigged to the killer’s website hits. The more people log onto the site, the faster the victim dies. Instead of The Silence Of The Lambs, this one should be thought as being more like The Silence Of The Server.
I’ve always had a crush on Diane Lane, and she was mainly the reason I sat through this one. Although she’s still a great actress--she’s certainly very believable, and sympathetic, as an FBI agent here--not even Lane’s presence could elevate this turkey from being just a bad Lifetime movie, only with more gore. And just like one of those lame Lifetime flicks, Untraceable is very predictable. You know the villain will eventually target the FBI agents who are after him--and what makes it worse is how the main characters make it so easy for him to do so. If they were truly this stupid, they never would have graduated from the FBI Academy in the first place (or, at least, one would like to think so).
But the killer’s computer/hacker skills are also so awesome, so devastating,
that he seems almost God-like in his powers. Not only does his computer system
out-classes that of the FBI’s cyber-crimes unit, but the dude can easily hack
cell phones, as well as the computer system inside a car (and can do this within
record time)! If he’s truly this talented, he should start his own dot com
company. The film also tries so hard to make a statement about how the internet
has helped to turn people into voyeurs, especially when it comes to watching
other people suffering. And while that’s as good as any a message to get across,
it would have been nice if it were contained within a halfway decent movie.
--SF
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