Review: Untraceable


Well, that's an hour and 38 minutes that we'll never see again... however, I must say that it was not as bad as Meet the Spartans.

To say that Untraceable was a bad film is to really be nice to it. If you need yet another film showing you grotesque ways for people to die, you might as well go see Saw (or so I'm told). If you want a good computer technology film, then go watch Live Free or Die Hard (yes, I'm actually serious about this... it's not accurate, but it's fun and it gets enough stuff right not to be falling all over itself with silliness).

On the note of technical authenticity, that was at least one place where Untouchable wasn't as bad as some similar films. They used words and phrases like "IP Address", "botnet", and "black hole" correctly (although they did a poor job of explaining them and the capabilities they had for these things were a bit off).

One of the more amusing moments in the film was a kind of backhanded slap at Network Neutrality, which is frankly one of the more annoying things about this film. There are a number of places in the film where the FBI agents (and the killer) lament the lack of control on the internet and seem to call out for more regulation and oversight (maybe in their world, AT&T's call for filtering would be welcomed).

But, back to the film. Diane Lane, usually a good actress with a number of fine films and an Oscar nomination, but this is a lean year for her if she's taking this part. Basically it's slasher/whodunit with technology as the bad guy. The pacing is pretty slow for a film this short, and they do a bad job of working up any kind of sympathy for the victims as part of the spin is that everybody is (more or less) random and anonymous.

I wouldn't put this on my top 100 list....