Untraceable may not rank as one of the best serial-killer thrillers of all time, but it packs enough punch to hold your attention way past the whodunit point.
Untraceable (2008)
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Reviews Counted:139
Fresh:20
Rotten:119
Average Rating:4.2/10
Consensus: Despite Diane Lane's earnest effort, Untraceable manages to be nothing more than a run-of-the-mill thriller with a hypocritical message.
Rated: 18 [See Full Rating] for some prolonged sequences of strong gruesome violence, and language.
Runtime: 1 hr 50 mins
Genre: Action/Adventure
Theatrical Release:29-02-2008
Synopsis: Directed by Gregory Hoblit (FRACTURE, PRIMAL FEAR), UNTRACEABLE follows F.B.I. cybercrimes specialist Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) as she attempts to track down a serial killer who brazenly displays... Directed by Gregory Hoblit (FRACTURE, PRIMAL FEAR), UNTRACEABLE follows F.B.I. cybercrimes specialist Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) as she attempts to track down a serial killer who brazenly displays his murderous deeds on the Internet. Aided by fellow agent Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) and local detective Eric Box (Billy Burke), Marsh tenaciously hunts for the elusive criminal in rainy Pacific Northwest settings, but as she closes in on her target, he deviously finds ways to get closer to her, all the while killing his victims in increasingly faster fashion. Clearly referencing a number of renowned thrillers--most notably the SAW films, SEVEN, and SILENCE OF THE LAMBS--UNTRACEABLE is far from an original cinematic exercise. However, Lane's steely, smart, and beautiful heroine ably anchors the film, which also benefits from its appropriately gloomy Portland, Oregon, backdrop. As with any effective suspense movie, the thrill is in the chase, with the cold-blooded killer proving to be quite adept at disguising his real location, even as his disturbingly popular site remains prominently on the web (hence the picture's title). Though not up to par with classics such as SEVEN and SILENCE, UNTRACEABLE is a well-crafted genre film that easily eclipses other like-minded fare, particularly FEARDOTCOM and the SAW sequels. [More]
Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross
Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Director: Gregory Hoblit
Screenwriter: Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker
Story: Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker, Allison Burnett
Producer: Steven Pearl, Andy Cohen, Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi, Hawk Koch
Composer: Christopher Young
Studio: Screen Gems
Reviews for Untraceable
...the picture is grimly unpleasant, and the formulaic conclusion subverts whatever earnest intentions were present at the beginning.
Morally duplicitous torture porn: how else to describe Untraceable, a bleak, rain-washed horror thriller.
This joyless thriller runs the gamut from unconscionable through unwatchable to unendurable. It's also unfathomable that two talented people, Diane Lane and her director, Gregory Hoblit, got themselves involved in such an unpromising enterprise.
In case you didn't catch it, the moral is that each time we indulge our inner voyeur by visiting macabre websites or tuning into salacious tabloid news, we're implicated in the larger cultural crime.
Untraceable demonstrates, once again, how unnecessary it is for audiences actually to understand technical jargon.
As plain awful as Untraceable is, possibly the worst thing about it is that it pretends to mean something.
It can't have been easy for hundreds of actors, technicians and stunt people to show up for work every day to make a movie whose message is, essentially: Don't go see this movie.
Untraceable isn't unwatchable, but it's a pretty miserable experience, from a director who knows better.
Untraceable often seems to go out of its way to tip off what's coming, so that it's hard to tell whether the film's writers are lazy, clumsy or just painfully obvious.
Technology is the film's only hook. Otherwise, it's a standard B-movie thriller featuring basement torture chambers and an FBI agent-single mom who tracks a killer before becoming a target herself.
You can call this movie Untraceable but you can't call it Unpredictable.
From its obvious foreshadowing to Marsh's big PowerPoint presentation of the killer's cause-and-effect, Untraceable is a mite too traceable to get under the skin.
Untraceable is also relentlessly grim and dull, and runs afoul of all the pitfalls you find in movies in which people rely on computers to do their detecting.
The movie chides us for being a sick voyeuristic society, hungry for the sight of violence. The purity of this moral stance is somewhat clouded by the movie's habit of staging sick violent acts.
Untraceable essentially forces its audience to identify with those who would be willing accomplices to torture and murder.
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