2008 Woodie Awards
Movie review: Untraceable
Jeremy Pink
Issue date: 1/30/08 Section: Web Extras
Oh how I long for the days of Hannibal Lecter, Norman Bates or, hell, even Michael Myers: the days of smart and truly sadistic killers. Nowadays there is none of that, just a sad infatuation with psychopathic, seemingly untouchable killer masterminds. The recent film "Untraceable" furthers this sad trend.
The film features Diane Lane as Jennifer Marsh: an FBI agent in the cybercrime division.
Marsh's job is to monitor the computer activity of Americans and bring them to justice. Yes, people actually walk the walk in correlation with that English, sometimes French, FBI rhetoric in the introduction to your DVDs.
Agent Marsh is at her division's office late at night, cracking down on identity thieves, hackers and the rest when she is given an anonymous tip about a site called killwithme.com.
She investigates the site to find a live, streaming video of a basement where people can watch an unidentified man kill things. The first to go is, sadly, a cat.
The site is shut down by its maker, seemingly just another sick person with a video camera. The case is thought to be over, but Marsh is called into action when the site is back up and the cat is replaced by a person. This time the more people who visit the site the faster the victim dies.
Normally, Marsh would just track down the IP address, and have local authorities kick the door in. However, the killer's computer IP address is untraceable because of a sophisticated series of mirrors, hosts, servers and a whole slew of other technical jargon most viewers, and probably the writers of the movie, don't understand.
Ah, but who needs believability right? It's 2008, where the government is all-seeing and all-knowing, except for that one little, overlooked psycho genius with a lot of mental baggage and even more spare time on his hands.
So Marsh and the rest of the FBI are left to watch and do nothing as victims are quickly executed one after the other by the populace who visit the site. The killings become quicker and quicker as more people find out about the site and visit to watch someone die. And there's even a message board! Oh goodie.
The film features Diane Lane as Jennifer Marsh: an FBI agent in the cybercrime division.
Marsh's job is to monitor the computer activity of Americans and bring them to justice. Yes, people actually walk the walk in correlation with that English, sometimes French, FBI rhetoric in the introduction to your DVDs.
Agent Marsh is at her division's office late at night, cracking down on identity thieves, hackers and the rest when she is given an anonymous tip about a site called killwithme.com.
She investigates the site to find a live, streaming video of a basement where people can watch an unidentified man kill things. The first to go is, sadly, a cat.
The site is shut down by its maker, seemingly just another sick person with a video camera. The case is thought to be over, but Marsh is called into action when the site is back up and the cat is replaced by a person. This time the more people who visit the site the faster the victim dies.
Normally, Marsh would just track down the IP address, and have local authorities kick the door in. However, the killer's computer IP address is untraceable because of a sophisticated series of mirrors, hosts, servers and a whole slew of other technical jargon most viewers, and probably the writers of the movie, don't understand.
Ah, but who needs believability right? It's 2008, where the government is all-seeing and all-knowing, except for that one little, overlooked psycho genius with a lot of mental baggage and even more spare time on his hands.
So Marsh and the rest of the FBI are left to watch and do nothing as victims are quickly executed one after the other by the populace who visit the site. The killings become quicker and quicker as more people find out about the site and visit to watch someone die. And there's even a message board! Oh goodie.
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