Untraceable (2008)

Image credit: John Bramley

NET LOSS Diane Lane guns for a psychopath in Untraceable, a floppy computer thriller she can't fix

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Is Unfaithful and Under the Tuscan Sun star Diane Lane just randomly picking movies that start with the letters U and N? On this evidence, quite possibly. She plays a widowed, cybercrime-investigating FBI agent on the trail of a creep who kills people in various grisly ways and broadcasts it live over the Internet. The twist? The more people who log on to the sicko's website, the quicker the victim bleeds out/fries to death/becomes the piquant seasoning in a sulfuric acid soup. That's right — the real perp is you (or possibly YouTube). Then the homicidal maniac hacks his way into Lane's computer and her own life is put at risk, as are the lives of her predictably cute daughter and mom.

Lane skillfully sells the tech-heavy script. But after a much-too-early reveal of the murderer's identity, the ''low battery'' signal starts to flash on this film by thriller specialist Gregory Hoblit, director of last year's far superior Fracture. Moreover, it seems a bit rich to criticize the public's appetite for watching grisly images while serving up scenes of torture porn that, in terms of visceral horror, come close to rivaling the nastiest moments of the Hostel or Saw franchises. The hypocrisy is, well, undeniable. B-