Torture porn genre gets ‘Untraceable’ treatment
By Mark Bailey on Jan. 29, 2008
By Daniel Neman
Media General News Service
“Untraceable” comes out strongly against the evils of the genre known as torture porn. In the course of trying to persuade us not to watch torture porn, it shows us lots and lots of torture porn.
Rampant hypocrisy in the name of crass commercialism is nothing new, of course, and in the right circumstances it can even be kind of quaint. But that can only be if it is competently made.
“Untraceable” is not.
It has the feel of one of those films that shows up on the lesser movie channels on TV, films that obviously never made it to the theaters but were still good enough to attract a recognizable star who probably should be attached to better projects.
The star in this case is Diane Lane. What, Ashley Judd wasn’t available?
Lane stars as Jennifer, an FBI agent specializing in Internet fraud. She is capable of cracking a major case in 30 seconds flat, including the time it takes to decide that a guy has to be guilty because he owns a few legally registered guns.
Jennifer heads up the investigation into a new Web site that shows a kitten being tortured to death. Authorities are surprised, but we sure aren’t, when the site next shows a person being tortured to death.
What is supposed to be the story’s hook is that the more people who watch the live-streaming torture, the faster the guy will die. This is the film’s moral, that people who watch real tragedy for vicarious thrills are actually contributing to the problem.
But it’s hard to shake the suspicion that the three screenwriters expended considerable energy trying to think up really cool new forms of torture, like the makers of “Saw” did. But the tortures in “Saw” were much more clever.
“Untraceable” is so predictable that the only fun to be had is after it is over and members of the audience stand around in little clumps to make fun of it.
One person may note how odd it is that an FBI agent can search her own car, gun drawn, and somehow miss the person hiding in the back seat. Someone else might remark that the killer’s victims are all closely intertwined — except for the major characters, who aren’t.
Still another might laugh at how ridiculously obvious it is that one particular character is going to be next (hint: he calls Jennifer to say he knows who the killer is, but he won’t reveal the information until he sees her in person).
Director Gregory Hoblit once made the great mystery “Primal Fear” and directed some fine television series, but here he clearly isn’t trying.
He does nothing to make the story more compelling, he draws an unusually bloodless performance out of Lane, and the thing was shot with a camera that looks to have come free in a box of cereal.
Perhaps he hopes that once the movie hits the theaters, he’ll be the one who is untraceable.
Contact Daniel Neman at (804) 649-6408 or .
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