Totally Traceable
posted on Thursday, February 21, 2008 in Movie Reviews
Computers and the internet have always been tricky subjects for Hollywood to tackle. More often than not, movies that involve some form of “hacking” end up as almost hilarious examples of unrealistic computing like The Net or Swordfish, where computer programming is a mystical practice that involves manipulating cubes on screen. Untraceable is a lot closer to the truth, but still falters completely. Jennifer Marsh is an agent working for FBI cyber crimes division. She tracks down internet criminals and leads the authorities straight to their door. A new website pops up called killwithme.com, that features a real time streamed video of someone being killed. The more people tune in, the faster the victim dies. Jennifer is tasked to track down this killer, but the killer proves to be untraceable.
The story is basically serves to admonish the current internet generation. Apparently, we all like to watch videos of people dying. While I'm not one to defend the internet by any means, this story smacks of run-of-the-mill sensationalism that totally exaggerates an issue. The script is overly sanctimonious, and just goes short of becoming an old man sitting on his porch, complaining about how kids today are all completely stupid. Meanwhile, the film itself indulges in the violent imagery that it seems to condemn.
So conceptually, the film is already pretty confused. In practice, it's entirely a muddled mess. The filmmakers didn't know how to advance their plot without having to resort to rapid fire technobabble. All the characters seem to be pretty inept, completely unable to figure out the next course of action. It's pretty annoying. The entire premise of this movie is that the killer is somehow “untraceable,” but the film doesn't really prove that case. Again, it's a case of Hollywood mystifying the internet, portraying it as some sort of impenetrable threat that normal people have no defense against.
The direction is pretty clumsy all in all. It's pretty obvious that the director really didn't really understand everything that was going on in his plot, and he just relied on what he saw on CSI. The one thing that the film pulls off pretty well is the gore, which is pretty strange and ironic, since that's exactly what it's rallying against. The death scenes are really grisly, and set up what little suspense this film actually has. Cast-wise, the film is okay. Diane Lane is always a solid actress, and while she doesn't exactly pull off all the technical talk, she's always easy to watch. Colin Hanks and Billy Burke round out a pretty unspectacular outing for actors.
There is merit in addressing the issues of the internet, in trying to understand its viral nature, but Untraceable just takes the wrong tack. It's sensationalist and ridiculous, and it represents in itself one of the things that people find objectionable about the net. It's cinematic hypocrisy, and we really shouldn't stand for it. Not reccommended.
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