Others say...

"Death by Internet"
You know those movies that by the time it's half over it's so bad or silly that you're wishing it was all over? I mean...the simple solution to those kinds of movies is change the channel (or turn the DVD off), right? But something keeps you watching. You've watched it this long; now you've just GOT to see how it ends. In fact, there's a half hour left and you have an appointment, so you set your DVR to record the rest so that you can "see how it ends."

That pretty much sums up my experience with Untraceable. Okay, okay...I guess 2 stars is a little harsh if I was so compelled to see it through. But, man, it was painful at times. Like watching some apple pie Jimmy Olsen look-a-like from Smallville trying to be Jigsaw from Saw...it just didn't work for me.

Basically Jimmy Olsen abducts people then puts them up on an "Untraceable" website where the victims are torturously murdered. The movie is not a whodunit; the movie shows you the killer pretty much right up front. It's more about the brutal killings and Lois...er, I mean...Diane Lane's team of cops tracking the killer. If not for the gruesome killings, this movie might have been better produced as an episode of C.S.I. or insert your favorite crime drama series here.

So my recommendation is to catch Untraceable on cable. Don't buy this or don't waste a spot in your rental queue.


"Weak and predictable plot"
Diane Lane in an uninspiring role as a cyber cop. Like this hasn't been done before on TV by one of the myriad crime shows. Acting was pretty bad. As I watched the movie, I kept saying to myself "I know what's going to happen next." It was comical hearing them referring to trojans, netbots, and all the cyber mumbo-jumbo. I was really impressed (he said, tongue in cheek). Because the storyline became so predictable, you don't care for the victims. Just a stupid movie.

"good late nite movie"
A minor comparison to saw movie series with another twist. Put it between saw2 and saw3. Good Movie to ad to your collection of killer flicks.

"From J. Kaye's Book (and Movie) Blog"
Un-freakin-believable! That was an edge of yourself thriller for me. The bad part is even though it is fiction and I could actual see something like that happening, which made it more real and scary for me.

The story is about a psychopath who broadcasts the torturous death of a kitten over the internet. It's an appetizer what's to come, which is the death of a person. Supposedly, if the hits to the website were to stop, the act of killing would stop. Like most things, the viewers don't believe this is real. It is and as the FBI gets closer to the killer the killer gets closer to them by kidnapping one of the team members.

Diane Lane plays FBI agent Jennifer Marsh and is like always, outstanding in her acting. The rest of the cast is equally as good with a powerful ending. Loved it!

""The whole world wants to watch you die, and they don't even know you.""
UNTRACEABLE, for all its aspirations to being a harrowing psychological techno-thriller, ends up mostly flat and uninteresting. But, after SAW and Rob Zombie's terrifying flicks, maybe my threshold for the grotesque and the disquieting is now just too high. The visceral torture scenes in UNTRACEABLE invoke a sense of uneasiness, but the rest of the film simply can't maintain the squirmy suspense. It's too bad, because things do start out promisingly and ominously, and with a kitten.

Diane Lane and Colin Hanks play two federal agents working out of the FBI's Cyber Crimes Division who become part of a Portland task force assembled to catch a psychopath who conducts online torture and eventual murder of his abducted victims, all done on live streaming video. The hook to his website is that it's interactive. The more hits the site garners, the faster the torture goes, and the sooner the victim dies, thus rendering the viewer an accomplice to murder. As the FBI and the Portland police desperately pursue leads - but mostly flounder around, feeling helpless - the killer begins to engage them in a cat & mouse game. And soon, members of the task force find themselves targeted. Note that Diane Lane's character is a widowed single mom, so concerns regarding her cute and curious daughter surface quite early.

Here's a bit of a rant (sorry, dudes): There's a dubious credo subscribed to by a rude percentage of the web surfing community, that with the ability to anonymously log on comes a certain rush and also a rebuffing of consequences. The world wide web can often times bring out the utter crud in people. The most disturbing things in the film may have been the crudity and mean-spiritedness generated on the snuff site's chat room window. This is the morbid onlooker's syndrome as transferred online, and it is unsavory stuff. Is it in our DNA that we get our ya-yas gazing at horrifying things, that we can't at all avert our eyeballs? Me, I'm not really one to talk. I couldn't help watching the SAW films, and HOSTEL. Hell, eons ago, I even saw FACES OF DEATH. And, like most, I'll take an inquisitive peek at a roadside accident. It's genetics, right? Because if it is, then I'll feel better about watching so many low taste films.

It's like this. A film can flirt with snuff & torturerama and then can have the gall to sermonize about voyeurism and the growing desensitizing of the masses. Fine by me. But, by the hammer of Thor, that film had better not bore me! UNTRACEABLE, being not at all an edgy film, failed to engage me. It's certainly a far cry from SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, or SE7EN, or even SAW. Just because a character in the film says mystifying things like "We're blackholing those IPs!" or "backdooring those Trojans," that does not a smart film make (and is it me or does "backdooring a Trojan" sound kinda not cool?). The film's weak elements serve to drag the whole thing down. Can't lay the blame too much on Diane Lane (although her character does some unclever things). Diane Lane is solid enough and lends a warmth to her character. But the rest of the cast is unremarkable (sorry, Tom Hank's son). There's a triteness to the story, a certain plodding blah-ness to it, and certainly no jaw-dropping twists. The website torture sequences are fraught with queasy tension and a certain sicko factor, so the film succeeds from that aspect. Yet the villain is unmemorable, and his identity really is revealed too early in the game (so there goes a chunk of the suspense). Typically, annoyingly, the agents are undermined by a self-serving and officious boss, and I only wish that he'd been kidnapped and tortured. Then there's the anticlimactic and unsatisfying showdown between Diane Lane and the killer, followed by the film ending rather abruptly. By that point, I didn't even mind.