Within the FBI there exists a division dedicated to investigating and prosecuting criminals on the internet. Welcome to the front lines of the war on cybercrime, where special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) have seen it all - until now. A tech-savvy internet predator is displaying his graphic murders on his own website and the fate of each of his tormented captives is left in the hands of the public: the more hits his site gets, the faster his victims die. When this game of cat and mouse becomes personal, Marsh and her team must race against the clock to track down this technical mastermind who is virtually untraceable.
Untraceable fuses Saw with The Net in a perverse yet moralistic story about a psychopath who broadcasts acts of torture over the internet--all to better reveal the twisted underbelly of the American public, who hasten the victims' deaths simply by looking at the website. FBI agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane, her mature-sexy mojo tamped down but still simmering in the corners of her eyes and the nape of her neck) launches a cyberhunt for the killer, only to find herself and her team caught up in his murderous scheme. It's hard to make tapping on a keyboard and staring at a computer screen exciting, but Untraceable does its best by making Marsh and her cybercrimebusting partner (Colin Hanks, King Kong) rattle off cascades of jaunty techno-jargon and do impressive bits of long-distance surveillance. The movie aims for the audience that flocked to see Ashley Judd in thrillers like Kiss the Girls and Double Jeopardy, but it's hard to say if fans of Lane's romantic fare like Under the Tuscan Sun or Must Like Dogs will enjoy the queasy violence. Nonetheless, the cast--including Mary Beth Hurt (The World According to Garp) as Marsh's mother--does a solid job and the movie clips along at an aggressive pace, maintaining tension throughout. --Bret Fetzer
Stills from Untraceable (click for larger image)
Beyond Untraceable
On Blu-ray
UMD for PSP
Soundtrack CD
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.0 / 5.0
"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... more info
Serial Killer Thriller:
"Untraceable," starring Diane Lane as Jennifer Marsh, head of the FBI Portland Cyber Crimes unit, uses as background gruesome, horrifically twisted crimes. This casts a dark cloud of foreboding over the proceedings.
A new website, KillWithMe.com, pops up with real images of a cat innocently lapping up milk from a saucer. The computer hacker has arranged that, the more people hit the website, the faster the cat will be killed through a contraption he's hooked up. Soon after, the stakes are raised when... more info
Not for Cat or animal people:
If you are a cat person to preserve your sanity do not watch this movie. At minimum skip the first 15 to 20 minutes.
Untraceable (Blue Ray):
This movie was very intense. I couldn't watch the whole thing the first time. I just wasn't in the mood. The second time I watched with friends and it was intense, but it was very good. If you are squeamish at all don't watch this, but if you like suspense till the end than this is for you.
