Untraceable
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DVD details
Actor: Billy Burke, Colin Hanks, Diane Lane, Joseph Cross, Zachary HoffmanBrand: Sony
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Portuguese (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Portuguese (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 2.40:1
Running Time: 101 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-05-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Untraceable
DVD Review: Surfing the Web for Murder
Summary: 4 Stars
The Internet is capable of many things, some of them good, some of them bad; "Untraceable" is a film that shows not only its ugly side, but the ugly side of humanity, as well. This is an unnerving, suspenseful film that doesn't skimp on social commentary, and this is despite the fact that it hurts like hell to hear it. I knew that I was supposed to feel absolutely icky walking out of the theater, but I had no idea I'd feel that way as soon as the film started: it begins in a dimly lit, grimy basement, where an unseen person begins torturing a kitten. Using a camcorder, this person transmits this awful footage to a live video feed on the Internet. The website--called killwithme.com--is soon up and running, and under mysterious circumstances, it comes to the attention of Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane), an FBI agent from Portland, Oregon specializing in Internet criminals. She's obviously disgusted by a website showing a tortured animal, but she has yet to learn what it means or even how the website operates.
That quickly changes. The next victim is a shirtless man who's had the website's name carved into his chest. An IV automatically pumps a decoagulant into his body, which prevents his blood from clotting. This means that he'll bleed to death, despite the fact that his chest wounds are relatively minor. But this isn't the worst of it; Marsh soon realizes that the speed of the IV drip is directly related to the number of hits the website gets. In a nutshell, the more hits, the faster the man dies. Sure enough, the hits just keep on coming, and within six hours, the man is dead. Marsh is immediately frustrated because she can't shut the site down--every time she tries, it bounces to a mirror site on a different server and continues to run. It also relies on an original Russian server, meaning the United States has no jurisdiction. In essence, killwithme.com is an untraceable website.
Marsh quickly understands that this case is going to require a lot of planning and precise execution. Assigned to the case with her is Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke)--they both believe that whoever is running the website is purposely seeking attention, and what better way to get it than with press conferences and news reports? An uptight FBI director (Peter Lewis) publicly announces that anyone who visits the website is an accomplice to murder, and of course, his words have the exact opposite effect. That's because there's now a third victim being broadcast on the website, and the hits are greater than they ever were before. I won't continue to describe what the killer actually does to these people, but it's safe for you to assume that, with each person, the methods get more and more unpleasant to watch.
Things take a personal turn when Marsh's daughter, Annie (Perla Haney-Jardine), says that a video of their house is being shown on the computer. Marsh runs outside to find an abandoned car with a camera hooked to the antenna and a dead body in the trunk. Clearly, whoever is running killwithme.com has tapped into her computer's personal files. How and why, she doesn't know. But she'd better find out soon, because the website is featuring yet another victim; as this new person suffers for everyone to see, Marsh finally realizes that each victim is somehow connected to the killer.
But who exactly is the killer? That's the obvious question for any murder mystery, and most of the time, we have to wait until the end for the big revelation. This isn't the case with "Untraceable." The audience actually learns the killer's identity early on--it's more a matter of the characters not knowing until the end. It's also a matter of figuring out the killer's motives, because we all know that a motive makes a murder mystery much more satisfying (although not necessarily more realistic). But in all honesty, the killer's identity is not what drives the story; this film is without a doubt a critical commentary on Internet technology, showing how something so benign can be used to showcase evil things. A minor subplot involves a secret DVD stash of snuff films and suicides--I know perfectly well that such DVDs actually exist and that there's a market for them. What does that say about humanity? Why do we like to watch that horrible stuff? The website in "Untraceable" is not a reflection of a screenwriter's twisted imagination, but of the reality that certain people would happily visit it if it were real.
The film's only weakness is the lack of developed relationships. Marsh is established as a workaholic who rarely spends time with her daughter. Marsh's mother, Stella (Mary Beth Hurt), does most of the nurturing. But not enough of this was shown; at a certain point, both Annie and Stella are sent away for their protection, and we never see them again, which is bad since they could have added so much more to the story. For some, the scenes of torture and murder will be too disturbing to watch, as this movie (correctly) steers clear of campy gore. I know that the image of that poor kitten will haunt me forever, which almost makes me wish I hadn't seen this film in the first place. But when taking into account the clever plot, the tense atmosphere, and the harsh social commentary, it becomes clear that "Untraceable" is too effective to overlook.
Description of Untraceable
Within the FBI there exists a division dedicated to investigating and prosecuting criminals on the internet. Welcome to the front lines of the war on cybercrime where special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) and Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) have seen it all?until now. A tech-savvy internet predator is displaying his graphic murders on his own website and the fate of each of his tormented captives is left in the hands of the public: the more hits his site gets the faster his victims die. When this game of cat and mouse becomes personal Marsh and her team must race against the clock to track down this technical mastermind who is virtually untraceable.System Requirements:Running Time: 101 minutesFormat: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE/PSYCHOLOGICAL THRILLER Rating: R UPC: 043396191341 Manufacturer No: 19134Bestsellers in DVD
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