Before the screening of Untraceable, a couple of FBI agents gave a short recruitment speech and offered to speak with anyone who was interested in joining the FBI after the film. I somehow doubt they ended up with many inquiries, as Untraceable did not strike me as a good FBI propaganda film.
Diane Lane stars as Jennifer Marsh, an FBI agent in the cyber crime division. She works closely with
Griffin, played by Tom Hank’s son
Colin. They spend most of their days tracking people stealing credit card numbers over the Internet, or posing as an underage girl in order to catch some pedophile. Their usual day is interrupted when a new web site called
killwithme.com makes its debut on the web. The site debuts with the murder of a cat, then quickly moves on to people. People are captured, then bound and gagged in some way. Their death is then streamed live through the web site. The more people that log on to the site, the faster some method of torture kills the victim. The FBI is on the case, but despite their best efforts the site can’t be shut down because it is “untraceable”, using some combination of servers in
Russia. Although the site is untraceable, the person who runs the site has to physically capture people and also dump the bodies. So he himself is not untraceable. As the FBI begins to close in,
Griffin, Jennifer, and her family become the new targets. Jennifer must catch this madman not only because it’s her job, but also to save her family.
The film is trying to make some kind of point about the sick people who scour the internet for footage of live deaths. With each new capture, killwithme becomes more popular. And when the FBI calls a press conference to tell people to avoid the unnamed site, people are more determined to find it. But this point is overshadowed by the contrived plot points that everyone will see coming.
This movie makes everything seem easy. It only takes a day to track down and arrest someone stealing credit card information, then it’s easy to set up untraceable web sites in any basement, and then it’s easy to find an FBI agent’s address and family info. I don’t see why FBI recruiters are recruiting after a film that makes it seem easy for a killer to come after an FBI agent. On the positive side, there are some tense moments, and the ending was a definite crowd pleaser. The positive does not outweigh the negative though. Wait for the DVD.
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