UNTRACEABLE

One evening FBI agent Jennifer (Diane Lane, JUMPER; THE OUTSIDERS) sits in her office busy at her nightshift job trawling the Internet in search of things that shouldn't be there.

A colleague hands her a website address received from anonymously. Jennifer logs onto the site and is greeted with a title page reading "KILL WITH ME". The home page shows a still photograph of a cat we'd seen being prepped for torture in the film's pre-credits prologue.

Jennifer, who now lives with her daughter at her mother's house following the death of her cop husband, returns home the following morning and is intrigued enough to log on to the site in her bedroom. When she does, she notices a forum where people are invited to give suggestions on how to kill the kitty - the more people who watch, the quicker it will die.

That evening, Jennifer brings the site to the attention of her boss and her team. Her boss puts things into perspective by dryly announcing "It's a cat" - he dismisses Jennifer's concerns and says he has bigger things to worry about.

But the very next day a man called Henry is abducted, winding up shackled and topless on "KILL WITH ME". The message is very simple: the more people who log on to the site, the quicker Henry will perish.

Upon being notified of this Jennifer rushes into work and begins frantically trying to locate the site's origins. But the site operator is very clever and runs rings around the FBI (he even sends them barging into the wrong house at one point, in a scene stolen directly from THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS).

Despite the FBI's best efforts - and Jennifer's boss teaming her up with surly detective Eric (Billy Burke, FRACTURE; LADDER 49) - Henry dies live online, the transmission ending with the ominous promise of "more to come".

Although not exactly hitting it off, Eric and Jennifer determine to work together in trying to track down the killer. They figure that the first thing they should be looking at is motive. Why Henry?

Their questions to Henry's nearest ones don't get them far, and a link to a recently deceased diabetic only serves to baffle them further. Matters aren't helped when their only suspect, the creepy Arthur, appears to have an airtight alibi.

UNTRACEABLE generously gives the viewer sight of the killer long before the cops establish who it is or why they've chosen their specific victims, as they abduct news anchorman David (Christopher Cousins, THE GRUDGE 2) and prepare him to be the next live execution.

And so, as Jennifer becomes increasingly obsessed with cracking the case, we get to see the killer develop an unsettling fascination with her and her family …

UNTRACEABLE is very nice to look at, with a deliberate blue hue to the visuals that echoes the style of the SAW films. The imaginative torture/murder scenes also recall the SAW franchise, although UNTRACEABLE never reaches the level of their gory excesses. Also, a'la SAW, the killer ends up having a very timely and moral motive for selecting his victims and very publicly slaughtering them.

Elsewhere, UNTRACEABLE cribs relentlessly from just about every serial killer film going: Jennifer is told to take time off as her boss informs her she's "off the case"; there's a scene where the killer observes an oblivious Jennifer while posing as a member of a crowd gathered at a crime scene; the mismatched partnership of Eric and Jennifer, who gradually develop a healthy respect for each other, is a depressingly conventional facet of almost every film of this ilk; the aforementioned misdirection where the viewer thinks the FBI are storming into the killer's house (director Gregory Hoblit owes a lot to Demme); the cat-and-mouse games between killer and cops performed over computers has been used in countless contemporary thrillers, COPYCAT being one of the more effective ones. I could go on.

So UNTRACEABLE lacks originality. As a result it's overly familiar and the finale is predictable.

Having said that, the editing is slick, the pace is brisk and the acting is above average. Lane is on top form as a vulnerable woman struggling to maintain a hard front in a man's world. Burke graces his character with more depth and understanding than such roles are usually given. The killer though (whose identity I naturally won't reveal) sneers and leers, as cinema throughout the decades has dictated all killers do.

The technical computer jargon of the bullet-paced dialogue is frequently reminiscent of CSI (people explaining stuff to their colleagues in minute details - when surely their colleagues do the same job as them), as is the overall veneer that at times makes the whole thing feel like a better-than-average TV film. Little surprise there, as Hoblit cut his teeth directing TV fare like "Hill Street Blues" and "NYPD Blue".

The disc presents the film uncut in a crisp, clean anamorphic widescreen presentation. English audio is presented in a pleasing 5,1 mix, with additional soundtrack options in Spanish and German. There are also optional subtitles in all three languages.

A scene-selection menu allows access to the main feature via 28 chapters.

Extras begin with a relatively engaging commentary track from Hoblit (PRIMAL FEAR; FALLEN), producer Hawk Koch and production designer Paul Eads. A fairly thorough examination of the technical side of the film's making, this serves to heighten appreciation of the main feature.

"Tracking Untraceable" is a 16-minute featurette comprised of retrospective on-camera comments from cast and crew members, intercut with plenty of clips from the film.

"The Personnel Files" is 15 minutes of the director and his staff talking about the film's casting. "As soon as I read the script, I knew Diane Lane would be ideal for this role" - the usual insincere tripe. A couple of cast members are present on this featurette too, including Lane.

"Blueprint of Murder" is 13 more minutes of crew members talking about how locations were chosen, how genuine FBI agents offered advice on the set, more information on the production design (already covered pretty comprehensively on the audio commentary).

"Anatomy of Murder" takes a 5-minute look into the FX of the film.

All four featurettes appear to have been filmed at the same time, so effectively you've got a 49-minute documentary split into four segments.

All extras, even the audio commentary, come equipped with optional subtitles in English, Spanish and German.

UNTRACEABLE may be too derivative for hardcore thriller fans, and may not be gory enough for the more forgiving horror crowd. But it's certainly watchable enough, and the disc is a good one.

Review by Stuart Willis