Skew Review: Untraceable
Last week, we rented Untraceable, a murder/mystery/thriller starring Diane Lane. Without getting into spoilers, it shows a special unit of the FBI that tracks down pedophiles, identity thieves, and any other online crimes.
I thought the movie did a good job of capturing the dark side of the internet. While I’m sure some of the techno-jargon (which sounded realistic) could be picked apart by our wannabe-Vulcan friends out there, and the ending of the movie could be construed as cheesy … I think the symbolic act by the FBI agent at the very end of the movie illustrates our responsibilities when we visit the web.
Damian recently wrote an article that touches on one of the areas where we the viewer are responsible for our actions whether we understand that or not — viewing online copyrighted material on Youtube. The first comment to that article was along the lines of the premise of the movie Untraceable — we can’t expect that there aren’t consequences for surfing and posting without regard to copyright and other laws.
Anyway, I like it when Hollywood makes a movie that attempts to confront the moral and ethicial implications of something new that’s going on in society — while not perfect, I think Untraceable delivers a strong message to viewers that, even on the internet, cause and effect happens. That means you, craigslisters!
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Nice
here are many plot holes in the movie, for example propper FBI protocal.
When a murder is being broadcasted over the internet and the signal is coming from your town. FBI doesn’t just do nothing. They systematically check all streamly data bands coming from their town. Normally this would catch the criminal within minutes after they find the ISP provider. Each check would only take a split second and they could narrow down the provider within seconds. This means shutting off the ISP for a split second and the live signal should flutter. If all else fails, they have the authority to shut down all ISP’s in the entire city. Another obvious solution, which has already been done in California is to do systematic brownouts. They shut down power in one block at a time. I highly doubt it is possible to use a generator/battery to supply that much light power without being noticed from outside.
also, the government does have access to trace signals being bounced off of other countries when it involves murders. I could understand why they weren’t authorized for a cat killing, but actually human murders… Chasing a murderer across country boundaries has been a common case, and Russia is not a 3rd world country. Russia actually has morals, and they would have assisted in catching this murderer.
Wow do these people in Hollywood just watch Chris Carter’s Millenium and write scripts based off episode concepts? Seriously this movie has the exact same plot as an episode from the series, which was on over 10 years ago mind you.
The Mikado – Frank Black and Peter Watts call in Millennium Group computer expert Brian Roedecker for assistance on a very serious case when they find a serial killer who broadcasts his gruesome crimes over the internet to a bevy of sick spectators. Is this the work of Avatar, a sadistic killer Frank’s tracked before, utilizing a brand new technological medium for his crimes?
In fact, the first thing I looked for in the credit block was to see if Michael Perry had written it since the story in the film is identical to the Millennium episode. The Mikado is my single favorite TV episode of any show ever and I always thought that it should be turned into a movie. But not like this.
What a rip. At least give credit to the man who came up with the idea in the first place and created one of the scariest hours of television (or film, for that matter) that I’ve ever seen.
Neither terrible nor memorable, Untraceable is the sort of movie that lives up to its name – within an hour of seeing it, memories of it will vanish without a trace.
Wow, Brian, did you come up with that all by yourself?
Did none of you READ Tony Vahl’s post?
Damian … what post. I thought we were just here to read our own words, and make off-topic comments…
Hey check out MY site! Things like that.
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Tony … I haven’t seen the movie, but being one of those “Vulcans” I might have a hard time with it.
lol…Gary, I don’t see the pointed ears in your pic. Perhaps they are covered?
LOL