“Untraceable” Directed by Gregory Hoblit Starring: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Joseph Cross

No Peppers out of

Cinema is more than 100 years old. In that time, storytelling has evolved from simple re-enactments of theater to sagas spread out over several films. Yet there comes a point where a hackneyed, overdone story just isn’t worth telling anymore. “Untraceable” exemplifies this problem.

“Untraceable,” directed by Gregory Hoblit, tells the story of two FBI officers who patrol the Internet to arrest hackers and trace thefts. While working at the office one night, Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) comes across the website killwithme.com where there are live video streams of a kitten being burned alive. Predictably, the kitten is dead by morning.

Eventually, the website begins to show the deaths of kidnapped adult males. Marsh soon learns that the more people who visit the website, the harsher the torture is for the victim, so she spends the next hour and a half running around, trying to figure out how the website works.

Every time she shuts it down, a mirror site brings it back online. Apparently, servers are set up all over the world to keep this site online. This explains why the National Security Agency is unwilling to offer its help to the FBI: international affairs. Oh, but this mess is only the beginning.

Marsh is soon joined by detective Eric Box (Billy Burke), the most incompetent and useless cop to grace the silver screen since “Super Troopers.”

Box helps Marsh out on her case by convincing her to use swear words to describe the killer, bringing her dinner and standing in shadows for reasons unknown. One might suspect him to be the killer considering how useless his character is to the investigation. Luckily, or perhaps to add to the film’s pointlessness, the question of the killer’s identity is revealed within minutes of the film.

The killer apparently has access to acids and a multitude of torture devices that he procured in the past few months. Where did he get this stuff? How did he get it? These questions are pushed aside in favor of excessive torture sequences.

Audiences don’t even have to watch the film to understand how this mess is going to end. Marsh is captured in her own car (don’t ask), and brought back to her own basement while her mother and daughter relax upstairs, oblivious. Complications ensue, gunfire occurs.

“Untraceable,” much like “Saw” and “FearDotCom” before it, uses scenes of grisly torture to show that sick people, if given the proper tools, can do terrible things to other people. Audiences get that.

What is interesting about “Untraceable” in terms of its failure as a film is the fact that it uses these scenes of torture to argue against our post 9/11 fascination with torture and thus completely contradicts itself. “Untraceable” doesn’t shy away from these graphic scenes – it capitalizes on them.

Torture scenes are drawn out not to reprimand the audience for its voyeurism, but rather to show the technological marvels of makeup, such as close-ups of a man’s skin coming off while he’s lowered into a tub of hydrochloric acid. The film contains one hypocrisy after another, alienating and ultimately boring its viewers.

“Untraceable” has no place in theaters, but the poor character development can hardly be blamed on the actors, who do their best with weak material. In short, the actors deserve better than this script, and moviegoers deserve better than the final product.