Untraceable *

Director: Gregory Hoblit

Cast: Diane Lane

Colin Hanks, Billy Burke, Joseph Cross, Mary Beth Hurt

What happened to the time when an old fashioned movie psychopath was just that?

Now, if they don't have some sort of terrorist trauma or a bizarre, unknown until then, illness they are plotting some sort of over the top, ridiculous revenge that honestly doesn't need all the fuzz.

Regardless of the reason the filmmakers choose, we rarely have to deal with that much more creepy realization that comes with not knowing why people act how they do.

Early in this film we discover the reasons why a young man is kidnapping people and then torturing them to death, while he streams the video online.

He has a website named killwithme.com in which as the number of viewers rise, the victim dies faster.

Not to try to make some deeper sociological remark about this, but in a way isn't this what goes on all the time in shows like "American Idol"?

Anyways, the always fascinating, Diane Lane plays Jennifer Marsh, an FBI cybercrime agent who gets assigned to the case along with a local detective (Burke) and her own tech guy (Hanks).

From this, the film evolves into a very by the number thriller that showcases elaborate action scenes while trying to deliver an intelligent message.

But it's in its message where it crashes, because instead of turning out a Hanekean essay on the acceptance of violence, it actually loves the gore and sickness it condemns.

And not only that, but it doesn't even bother to live up to trashy entries of its genre.

People have always loved unjustified violence, maybe because the distance of watching it is enough to satisfy the morbid desire to experience it.

"Untraceable" seems to have forgotten that what it shows is child's play compared to the things we can find for free online or out in the streets.