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'Untraceable'

Rating:

BY JAN STUART | jan.stuart@newsday.com

January 25, 2008

The Internet Movie Database, that encyclopedic CliffsNotes of all things celluloid, sums up the new Diane Lane thriller with the following plot keywords: "Snuff/Shirtless Male Bondage/Serial Killer/ Torture."

If anything about that little laundry list piques your interest, then you are just the sort of sucker the writers and producers of "Untraceable" are banking on. Before dropping everything you are doing and dashing out to see this movie, however, constituents of clinically gory horror films should bear in mind that "torture" is listed last.

Fans of bloodfests may still get their money's worth with "Untraceable," in which a serial murderer variously bakes his victims to death, dunks them in a vat of time-release acid, carves messages on their chest and injects them with toxic substances. A kitten that is merely lured into a rat glue trap gets off easy.

"Killwithme.com" is the name of a Web site streaming this activity live to an enthusiastic Internet audience that numbers in the millions. Lane plays Jennifer Marsh, an FBI agent specializing in computer crime who is assigned to track down the sicko behind it, aided by her young serial-dater partner (Colin Hanks) and a homicide detective (Billy Burke).

A widowed mother sharing a nice old Portland, Ore., home with her mom and daughter, Jennifer is a tough cookie of the Jodie Foster school who only lets the tears flow in the privacy of her shower. Like many of her law enforcement sisters on TV and in the movies, Jennifer suffers a male boss with a habit of ignoring her judgment calls and making jerky decisions.

There is no great mystery surrounding the identity of the killer, which is revealed halfway along. "Untraceable" relies for most of its chills on the savage crimes themselves, whose bare-chested, sado-erotic element contributes to the script's gratuitous homophobic undertone.

The story was conceived by an attorney and orthopedic surgeon who, given the film's slippery ethical dance, one might be reluctant to trust in a court of law or an operating room. Like a family-values congressman caught with his pants down, "Untraceable" wants us to deplore the amoral voyeurism of the cyberspace mobs, yet feeds off it at the same time.

Gregory Hoblit orchestrates this carnival of sleaze with a measure of restraint that may be anathema to "Hostel" devotees but very welcome to those of us who have been dragged into the theater kicking and screaming. "Untraceable" gets an additional touch of class from its star, who has drifted a considerable distance from whipping up fabulous banquets under a Tuscan sun and lighting up Frankie Muniz's drab life with a dog named Skip.

UNTRACEABLE (R). Diane Lane is an FBI special agent on the hunt for an Internet serial killer who commits his sadistic crimes before a Web-chat audience. S'nuff said? 1:36 (grisly violence and torture, and some language). At area theaters.