I was right with this one...

[viktor_haag]

... until the end of the trailer.

OK, I admit it, I like Diane Lane. Especially in the recent years of her career, she's done smart, effective work. I like that she seems like a real person who's comfortable with who she is, what age she is, and the roles she plays. Lane is right up there with Joan Allen in my list of female actors for whom I bring a default interest in the work they do. (And yes, a lot of it has to do with liking to see them doing the work they're doing.)

So when I saw the trailer for Untraceable listed on Apple's site, I thought, "Hey - a computer-based thriller starring Diane Lane! Let's see!".

Sadly, what it seems to be is yet another stoopid, super-clever-slasher flick, right down to the "I'm right here in your car, Barbara" moment. Really, the plot appears to be a re-hash of a series of Homicide episodes, with dollops of "internet speek" spread on top. The trailer's not really long enough to be able to tell if the tech in the movie approaches anything close to reality, and you know, I have very little desire to wade through all the clever-slasher torture pr0n in order to find out.

Sad.

Comments

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

There's been more than a few movies that were actually ABOUT the moral implications of being complicit in someone else's murder in a public arena, and that didn't just use it as a hook for a dumb stalker/slasher thriller.

One was "8MM", which a lot of people hated but which I thought was actually pretty brave given that they were trying to pull the whole thing off within the context of a Hollywood-level thriller. The whole thing clicked when [SPOILER ALERT!] the detective (the Nicholas Cage character) called the mother of the dead girl and asked for her permission to do as he would with her killer. [END SPOILER!] I had never seen that kind of thing done in a movie of this caliber before, and that alone elevated the film a notch in my eyes. They didn't look away from the really horrible possibilities brought up in the film.

The other is "Funny Games", which, amazingly enough, has just been remade by its own director as an English-language film.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I have seen "8MM" and I would say that I didn't hate it, but I did think it a poor substitute for "Se7en" upon whose heels it followed. In general, I'm just not a big fan of these bloody morality plays, not the least because more and more, recently, they seem to have degenerated into self-referential exercises in torture pr0n and complicit voyeuristic guilt. I'm just not interested in having the worst of depraved human behaviour rubbed in my face, I guess (or at least, that's how I feel about the whole exercise).

Every time I see one of these trailers, I find myself pining for the fun-loving, campy, sex-farce-romps of early seventies Italian cinema where all the men were dumpy and dopey, and all the women were Laura Antonelli. Ah! Sweeter times!

Arguably just as twisted a view of reality, but at least more pleasant.

[sixteenbynine.livejournal.com]

I do watch and admire such films but not as a steady diet of anything.

My personal feeling is that once Criterion brings out their remaster of "Salo", which is about the last word ANYONE could have on this subject cinematically, the torture-porn idiots will put their tails between their legs and slink off when they realize someone beat them to it 30 years earlier and said more or less everything possible that could be said in the confines of that so-called genre.

Oh, and in my case, I pine a tot for the nutso Nikkatsu sleazoid romps of the Sixties and Seventies, which were at least brassy fun.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Check. 8)