The New York Times-20080125-Brutal- Painful Death- Just a Mouse Click Away- -Review-

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Brutal, Painful Death, Just a Mouse Click Away; [Review]

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Morally duplicitous torture porn: how else to describe Untraceable, a bleak, rain-washed horror thriller whose predatory villain delivers a scolding lecture about Internet voyeurism and the dark side of human nature? That lecture arrives as a contemptuous I told you so at the end of the movie, after the designated fiend has streamed live video of several of his hideous crimes on his own Web site, killwithme.com.

Paragraphs of technobabble spouted by Special Agent Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) of the F.B.I.'s cybercrime unit in Portland, Ore., explain why the Web site is untraceable. It takes a cyberwizard like Jennifer to catch a cyberwizard. Meanwhile the murders are carried out with different elaborate devices, each of which suggests a high-tech variation of something out of Edgar Allan Poe.

The killer's cruel joke: The more people who visit the site, the faster the victims die. A counter records the accelerating number of hits as each new torture is unveiled. More than 27 million viewers rush to watch the spectacle of a woman strung upside down from the ceiling, as she is lowered inch by inch over rotating blades. Another victim is strapped inside a tank of water into which sulfuric acid is slowly dripped. Although his head and shoulders remain above water, the skin below peels away like wads of pink tissue paper as his eyes bug out and his face turns crimson.

The moral lesson: The act of watching makes us accessories to murder; without an audience, no one would die.

You may view Untraceable, as I do, as a repugnant example of the voyeurism it pretends to condemn. Or you may stand back and see it as a cleverly conceived, slickly executed genre movie that ranks somewhere between Seven and the Saw movies in sadistic ingenuity.

Gregory Hoblit, the director, was a producer and director on L.A. Law and Hill Street Blues in the 1980s and NYPD Blue in the 1990s. His best-known film, Primal Fear, made a star of Edward Norton in 1996. He has the clammy visual vocabulary and jittery rhythm of the crime-fighting movie down cold.

The killer's spree begins with a grisly test run on a cat, in which he promises viewers to kill the animal once his site gets a certain number of hits. Jennifer, the smartest investigator in her unit, immediately intuits that this is just a prelude to something much worse.

The movie gives her a possible romantic interest in her fellow detective Eric (Billy Burke), who hovers protectively around her but keeps his hands off. She also has a nerdy younger partner, Griffin (Colin Hanks, Tom's son), whose habit of making blind dates with women on the Internet leads him into the killer's lair.

Jennifer is a stereotypically vulnerable target, a widowed single mother who lives in a dark, drafty house with her own mother, Stella (Mary Beth Hurt); her 8-year-old daughter, Annie (Perla Haney-Jardine); and a cat with a sixth sense. The place is begging to be invaded by a kidnapper, and the movie can't resist toying with your fear that it is only a matter of time before either Jennifer or her daughter, or both, land in the killer's gadget-clogged cellar.

Bringing her usual intensity to the role, Ms. Lane succeeds in making Jennifer a conflicted woman of some depth who is torn between her professional commitment and her family. The role of a high-strung thoroughbred with a streak of stubborn independence is one she has played before.

Lightness does not come easily to Ms. Lane. Even in her characters' upbeat moments, you sense the shadows under the surface. The clench of her jaw, the taut tendons of her neck and her rigid posture evoke a loner bravely gritting her teeth as she gazes steadily into the darkness.

As cynical as it is, Untraceable leaves a sharp, lingering aftertaste. When the killer crows that it won't be long before we are paying to download commercially sponsored atrocities on our cellphones, you have the uneasy feeling that he may be right.

Untraceable is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has strong language and scenes of torture.

UNTRACEABLE

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Gregory Hoblit; written by Robert Fyvolent, Mark R. Brinker and Allison Burnett, based on a story by Mr. Fyvolent and Mr. Brinker; director of photography, Anastas Michos; edited by David Rosenbloom; music by Christopher Young; production designer, Paul Eads; produced by Steven Pearl, Andy Cohen, Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi and Howard Koch Jr.; released by Screen Gems. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.

WITH: Diane Lane (Jennifer Marsh), Billy Burke (Detective Eric Box), Colin Hanks (Griffin Dowd), Joseph Cross (Owen), Perla Haney-Jardine (Annie) and Mary Beth Hurt (Stella).

[Illustration]PHOTO: Colin Hanks and Diane Lane in Gregory Hoblit's Untraceable. (PHOTOGRAPH BY JOHN BRAMLEY/SONY PICTURES)