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SUSPECT ZERO (2004)
"Project Icarus"? Was "Project Prometheus" already taken? By 2004, serial-killer FBI-profiler type movies had run their course thoroughly enough that they needed a nice, big hook to attract any notice. Suspect Zero has such a hook, and the only people who bothered to see this did so because they heard about it. Problem is, it's a plot twist revealed about 2/3 of the way through the movie. I don't know how fair it would be to reveal what that hook is in the review, but it wouldn't really illuminate my points so I'll leave it for you to discover, should you be misguided enough to do so. Ben Kingsley's one such serial killer, who we first meet in a "how the hell did he get in the back seat that quickly?" scene. Few good actors have demonstrated as much willingness to appear in obviously shit movies as Ben Kinglsey has (he's in the next Uwe Boll movie, for fuck's sake). There's him, and Michael Caine, and...him and Michael Caine. Back to the movie. Aaron Eckhart is the FBI guy, who has ex-girlfriend issues with the lady he's partnered with, played by Carrie-Ann Moss who was probably included in this movie for the same (gender-reversed) reason Sean Bean found himself in Silent Hill. There's the standard I-dare-you-to-catch-me taunting (by fax, in this case) without which the movie probably couldn't proceed, which tides us over until we finally hear first-hand the only reason we got suckered into seeing this. What this adds up to is one of the worst of this kind of movie yet, which is mostly assembly-line McMovie and deviates from expectations only by, essentially, cheating - notably, the plot twist that rests on the assumption that ESP is for real, revealed way too late in the movie for that to be a fair tactic. Why not throw in some vampires and sorcerers while they're at it? It whiffs of psychic-linkery. There's another serial killer who gets nicknamed "suspect zero" because he perfectly covers his tracks, strikes completely at random, and has no modus operandi that, you'd think, would even link the crimes to each other. There's a gigantic and (need I say it) glossy black Mack truck he drives that would like to have a word with the FBI on that last point. Lots of creepy charcoal drawings figure into the deceptively thin, chock-fulla-red-herrings plot, which might've made for cool souvenirs for the cast and crew. There's nothing here even fans of serial-killer flicks would much care about, since in most regards it's just more of the same old shit, right down to the spazzy "oh the horror" imagery. The only reason anyone would see it is deflated as soon as the psychic link comes in. (c) Brian J. Wright 2006 BACK TO THE S's BACK TO THE MAIN PAGE |