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'Untraceable' FBI agents track a serial killer who uses technology as his assassin's hood in Untraceable. The media and a voyeuristic public catch some blame in the gory deaths, but the result is less commentary and more "torture porn,' akin to the Saw films.

Review

Culture

'Untraceable'

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Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke) hunts an elusive serial killer in Untraceable. John Bramley/Lakeshore Entertainment Group LLC hide caption

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John Bramley/Lakeshore Entertainment Group LLC

Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke) hunts an elusive serial killer in Untraceable.

John Bramley/Lakeshore Entertainment Group LLC
  • Director: Gregory Hoblit
  • Genre: Crime Thriller
  • Running Time: 100 minutes

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This obnoxious little serial-killer epic features Diane Lane and Colin Hanks (Tom's son) as FBI agents trying to find a creep who's trained a Webcam on people he's torturing. Media reports fuel a frenzy — and the more hits the creep gets on his Web site, the quicker the acid drips, or the hotter the heat lamps burn.

We're meant to be as appalled as the FBI agents are at the public's appetite for sadism, while simultaneously feeling implicated for having attended a movie that exploits that appetite with wide-screen images of blistering skin and dissolving flesh.

That sounds double-edged, but it isn't really; despite reasonably taut direction from Gregory Hoblit, Untraceable registers as little more than standard-issue torture porn – Saw 17 with a classier cast.