|
Untraceable | 
| Director: Gregory Hoblit
Actors: Diane Lane, Colin Hanks, Billy Burke, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Buy New: $3.99
Rating:  72 reviews
Sales Rank: 94
Genre: Action - Crime
Rating: R (Restricted)
Media: Video On Demand
Running Time: 102 Minutes
ASIN: B001BRS5WG
Theatrical Release Date: January 25, 2008
Release Date: August 22, 2008 (New: Last 30 Days)
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Synopsis:
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. |
| Similar Items:
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 67 more reviews...
 Tough, Brutal Diane Lane Thriller With Something To Say About Modern Times February 27, 2008
Terence Allen (Atlanta, GA USA)
23 out of 24 found this review helpful
Untraceable certainly isn't a flawless thriller, but it's a solid, enjoyable one. It's not only a grisly, hard-at-times to watch film, but it has a brain, and definite opinions about how our culture seems to feed like pirahna on the misery and suffering of others using the immediacy of the internet.
Diane Lane plays an Portland FBI cybercrime investigator who finds herself after a gruesome killer who kidnaps his victims and tortures them to death on the internet, upping the ante as fast as he gets hits on his website. Lane's character is still grieving the death of her husband, a policeman killed in the line of duty, and this case quickly intrudes on her life with her mom and her young daughter.
There's no phony romance with her cop partner, no killer who is somehow connected to Lane, and she gets to save the day without a male cop taking over for her. There are plot aspects that don't ring true, but overall, this is a smart, engrossing film that has something to say, and says it pretty well.
Nightmare Low on Extrapolation and Tension May 29, 2008
JP's Picks (Boise, ID)
19 out of 26 found this review helpful
Novel in its approach, 'Untraceable' asks interesting moral questions about a plausible technological nightmare. A disgruntled man kidnaps select victims to torture and kill, adding more of a given hazard as the numbers of people log into his website. As his online broadcast is made known, FBI agents (headed by Jennifer Marsh [Diane Lane]) try to keep the situation under the radar and bloggers off the website. Savvy for obtaining a Russian domain for his website, the perpetrator renders the crew unable to pinpoint much less stop the website until they can locate him at his hideout. Sometimes a grizly update of Edgar Allan Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum," the film is often reminiscent of 'Silence of the Lambs' with eerie surveillance scenes. Somewhat cynical and far less tense, 'Untraceable' often remains more educational than entertaining. (2.5 *'s)
Stay with me, slay with me April 27, 2008
Amanda Richards (Georgetown, Guyana)
18 out of 33 found this review helpful
(to the tune of Stay With Me - Diana Ross)
Stay with me
Slay with me
Come on-line and play with me
Maybe you should rearrange your plans
I'll show you a whole new world I've found
Watching victims posed and bound
Now you can hear them screaming here
Where they can't be found
Won't you stay with me
Slay with me
Just sign on and play with me
If you're here you'll see them die today
If you could spend your day with me
Watch my website, `cos it's free
And of all the nights you've surfed gross stuff
Tonight's the night you'll see some snuff
Short Attention Span Summary (SASS):
1. Big Brother is monitoring your website
2. There are millions of sickos in cyberspace
3. The Feds make a good audience
4. Internet surfing can be dangerous to other people's health
Summary:
If you can avoid the obvious plot holes and devices, and aren't too concerned about accuracy or the over-dramatization of the evil that lurks in the hearts of internet users, you'll find this an engrossing (albeit disturbing) movie. Diane Lane is too good an actress for this movie, so of course she carries the bulk of it on her shoulders, but Joseph Cross (Running With Scissors) also holds his own. Colin (son of Tom) Hanks and Mary Beth Hurt also lend strong support.
Not much profanity, and there are "blink-and-it's-gone" suggestions of adult content, but the depictions of extreme cruelty to feline and human victims may upset some viewers, even though it's not gory. Horror fans won't be impressed, but there's more than enough to make your skin crawl.
Amanda Richards, April 27, 2008
Surfing the Web for Murder January 26, 2008
Chris Pandolfi (Los Angeles, CA)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
The Internet is capable of many things, some of them good, some of them bad; "Untraceable" is a film that shows not only its ugly side, but the ugly side of humanity, as well. This is an unnerving, suspenseful film that doesn't skimp on social commentary, and this is despite the fact that it hurts like hell to hear it. I knew that I was supposed to feel absolutely icky walking out of the theater, but I had no idea I'd feel that way as soon as the film started: it begins in a dimly lit, grimy basement, where an unseen person begins torturing a kitten. Using a camcorder, this person transmits this awful footage to a live video feed on the Internet. The website--called killwithme.com--is soon up and running, and under mysterious circumstances, it comes to the attention of Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane), an FBI agent from Portland, Oregon specializing in Internet criminals. She's obviously disgusted by a website showing a tortured animal, but she has yet to learn what it means or even how the website operates.
That quickly changes. The next victim is a shirtless man who's had the website's name carved into his chest. An IV automatically pumps a decoagulant into his body, which prevents his blood from clotting. This means that he'll bleed to death, despite the fact that his chest wounds are relatively minor. But this isn't the worst of it; Marsh soon realizes that the speed of the IV drip is directly related to the number of hits the website gets. In a nutshell, the more hits, the faster the man dies. Sure enough, the hits just keep on coming, and within six hours, the man is dead. Marsh is immediately frustrated because she can't shut the site down--every time she tries, it bounces to a mirror site on a different server and continues to run. It also relies on an original Russian server, meaning the United States has no jurisdiction. In essence, killwithme.com is an untraceable website.
Marsh quickly understands that this case is going to require a lot of planning and precise execution. Assigned to the case with her is Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke)--they both believe that whoever is running the website is purposely seeking attention, and what better way to get it than with press conferences and news reports? An uptight FBI director (Peter Lewis) publicly announces that anyone who visits the website is an accomplice to murder, and of course, his words have the exact opposite effect. That's because there's now a third victim being broadcast on the website, and the hits are greater than they ever were before. I won't continue to describe what the killer actually does to these people, but it's safe for you to assume that, with each person, the methods get more and more unpleasant to watch.
Things take a personal turn when Marsh's daughter, Annie (Perla Haney-Jardine), says that a video of their house is being shown on the computer. Marsh runs outside to find an abandoned car with a camera hooked to the antenna and a dead body in the trunk. Clearly, whoever is running killwithme.com has tapped into her computer's personal files. How and why, she doesn't know. But she'd better find out soon, because the website is featuring yet another victim; as this new person suffers for everyone to see, Marsh finally realizes that each victim is somehow connected to the killer.
But who exactly is the killer? That's the obvious question for any murder mystery, and most of the time, we have to wait until the end for the big revelation. This isn't the case with "Untraceable." The audience actually learns the killer's identity early on--it's more a matter of the characters not knowing until the end. It's also a matter of figuring out the killer's motives, because we all know that a motive makes a murder mystery much more satisfying (although not necessarily more realistic). But in all honesty, the killer's identity is not what drives the story; this film is without a doubt a critical commentary on Internet technology, showing how something so benign can be used to showcase evil things. A minor subplot involves a secret DVD stash of snuff films and suicides--I know perfectly well that such DVDs actually exist and that there's a market for them. What does that say about humanity? Why do we like to watch that horrible stuff? The website in "Untraceable" is not a reflection of a screenwriter's twisted imagination, but of the reality that certain people would happily visit it if it were real.
The film's only weakness is the lack of developed relationships. Marsh is established as a workaholic who rarely spends time with her daughter. Marsh's mother, Stella (Mary Beth Hurt), does most of the nurturing. But not enough of this was shown; at a certain point, both Annie and Stella are sent away for their protection, and we never see them again, which is bad since they could have added so much more to the story. For some, the scenes of torture and murder will be too disturbing to watch, as this movie (correctly) steers clear of campy gore. I know that the image of that poor kitten will haunt me forever, which almost makes me wish I hadn't seen this film in the first place. But when taking into account the clever plot, the tense atmosphere, and the harsh social commentary, it becomes clear that "Untraceable" is too effective to overlook.
Wait a minute...what are you trying to say....are you blaming us for loving violence!?1? May 21, 2008
Jenny J.J.I. (That Lives in Northern Nevada)
10 out of 12 found this review helpful
Untraceable seems like the perfect thriller. And it deals with something that not a lot of thrillers have yet dealt with and that's the idea of cyber crimes and a very disturbing cyber-crime at that. Untraceable could have been the perfect set up for a very disturbing, gory thriller with homages to Silence of The Lambs, Saw, and other thrillers. Unfortunately where the idea was great the execution was awful. I think many mistakes were made with this dud and done differently it could have been great. The unfortunate part is that director Gregory Hoblit is not lacking experience. In fact he has directed some fantastic thrillers and should have been able to make this a far more worthwhile cause. Not only that but he has years of experience of TV Cop Drama and yet fails miserably in creating any sort of character arc or real thrill to the story. Its not a complete wash I mean there are moments where you slide forward on the front of your seat as they dangle this murder in front of you and you think "All right, here we go" and then the next scene sends you slouching back into 'this is boring' mode. Its the perfect collection of the wrong elements.
One reason being Miss Diane Lane. She's a pretty good actress and I like her in a couple of films though I never been a major fan of hers and always seen her in mostly supporting roles. In here I find her boring and just with no emotion to her and that's exactly what she brings to the table. She leads the film in a boring manner without ever really getting into the case besides showing a lot of perseverance. Colin Hanks, probably the most talented on board, does show a lot of potential but they never give him enough to work with so he mostly is just there. Billy Burke is the hot detective who shows up to help out the single Lane. Burke barely is a blip on the radar other than being some sort of lame romantic contact for Lane that never really pans out.
Perhaps given a better, more dynamic script this cast could have pulled together and done something but I think they were an unfortunate ingredient because there was no chemistry no spark, except for maybe a slight connection between Hanks and Lane as partners. Now the real key to this film should have been the murders. The idea was the more people that visited a web site where someone was strung up and dying in a different way, the faster they died. This could have opened up a huge door for being diverse and interesting and they do a half decent job and the murders are grisly and disgusting but everything else around it is so tame and boring that you can easily forget about this film.
|
|
|
We'll be adding even more exciting features to assist you in the coming year.
Thank you for shopping at the Depot.com online shopping depot.
©2008 Depot.com | |
