Title: Untraceable (2008)
Genre: drama, thriller
Directed by: Gregory Hoblit
Written by: Robert Fyvolent (screenplay), Mark Brinker (screenplay), Allison Burnett (screenplay)
Actors: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks
aStore: DVD, Blu-Ray, digital
The first time I saw a trailer for this back in 2008, I thought it was going to be another one of those stupid “Killer guy has a website and everyone that visits it *mysteriously* dies” type of movies, but I was pleasantly surprised.
I bought the DVD on sale and wasn’t really expecting too much when I watched it. Sure, there’s lots of stupid stuff going on and you can totally be like “Why the hell would she get back in the car?” But come on, it’s a movie, it’s for entertainment, and I honestly really enjoyed it.
You have a guy killing people on his website, building crafty machines that use the hit counter to decide how long someone is going to live. So of course everyone in America was going to check out the site, they got told not to!
It’s kind of a grim commentary about the kind of people we are. We might not go out and kill someone personally, but we have no problem taking a peek at a dead body. Wasn’t that the whole premise of that coming of age story “Stand By Me” where someone asks “Do you wanna see a dead body?” and everyone unanimously replied, “Hell yeah!”
If you suspend some of your belief in the FBI and the police being able to track some guy down, this is actually a pretty good popcorn movie. There’s just enough ick — guy gets killed by sunlamp, guy gets melted by sulfuric acid — that you root for the good guys, and there’s some fairly clever death machines displayed without going completely over the top ala the Saw franchise.
Plus you’ve got a strong female lead in Diane Lane, who I personally adore. I also really like her haircut in this movie and was admiring it throughout 🙂
I can maybe understand why this movie didn’t do so great in the box office, but I still really enjoyed it and I think more people would if they gave it half a chance.
Once again this is a movie that was the victim of bad marketing. Instead of being some teeny-bopper slasher flick with some crazy guy killing people through the computer, you have a disturbed man trying to get some kind of vindication for his father’s death and the way it was publicized on the internet.
I think part of the reason why some people didn’t like this movie was that it struck a nerve because it could really happen. We have become so detached from reality that we no longer associate the things we see online with real people. We’re just in it for the lulz.
My rating: 4 for entertainment value and Diane Lane kicking ass while tied up.
