Untraceable: Good Thriller Devolves into Standard Slasher Flick

In Untraceable, Diane Lane stars as Jennifer Marsh, a special agent with the FBI, working in the Internet Crimes Division. During the day, Marsh spends her time raising her young daughter but at night she trolls the internet with her partner, Griffin Dowd (played by Colin Hanks), hunting down bad guys. A normal night's work usually finds them nabbing identity thieves and predators, but one night they find something new and worse.

The pair finds themselves watching a man as he slowly kills a kitten at Killwithme.com. They soon figure out that the more hits the site receives, the faster the kitten dies. When the pair of agents goes after the website, they discover that it's untraceable. Things heat up quickly and soon humans become the site's victims. The webmaster, Owen Reilly, played by Joseph Cross promises to kill his captured prey once the site receives a certain amount of hits. As the hits build up, he continues to torture his victims in ever-more clever ways until he finally murders them.

When the site's random victims start becoming not-so random, Agent Marsh realizes that there is some kind of connection between her and Reilly. The movie takes some plot twists as she struggles to figure out what that connection is. Time begins to run out quickly when the webmaster's choice of victims starts hitting closer to home for Marsh.

This is a technically sound film for the most part and tech nerds will be able to follow the script easily. For the rest of us, there are times when a Geek-to-English dictionary would really come in handy. There are a few flaws, but the main one revolves around the idea of an untraceable website. Once you can wrap your mind around what isn't currently possible, it gets easier to accept the premise of the movie. The movie itself is loaded with a lot of gory torture and violence, which helps give it an R-rating. Audience members may find Untraceable to be something of a Saw/torture porn film. This is either a good or a bad thing, depending on your take. The movie also tends to take a somewhat preachy stance, especially concerning subjects like marketing, voyeurism and the media. This film would be standard if it weren't for some of its bright points.

Luckily for the film, it still has several things going for it. The best of these is Diane Lane, who delivers another strong, solid performance as Agent Marsh. Lane has a way of taking mundane roles and making them worth watching. In the case of Untraceable, she deftly takes a standard cop-type character and makes it into a well-rounded person. Colin Hanks also performs admirably in one of his first feature roles. He shares a lot of his famous father's better characteristics (yes, he is Tom Hanks' son). The rest of the cast also turn in solid efforts. Director Gregory Hoblit's skills on the other side of the camera also help out greatly. If there's one thing he knows, its suspense.

Unfortunately, in the end, we simply have a good thriller devolving into a standard slasher flick. The only thing that separates it from the chaff is the above average performance of the cast and director. Fans of horror and suspense will enjoy this film for what it is: fairly smart, full of suspense and rather bloody. The average movie-goer out looking for a crime drama might get squeamish with all the gore.