Suspect Zero

Good movie but underrated at 5.8. Should be rated well into the 6's and, for my tastes, a 7. While there are some cliches, there are some very good twists and excellent spins on the genre. Well worth watching. There is so much great content available these days that I rarely waste my time on anything less than a 6.5 (Yes, IMDB is my go-to source for ratings) but this one came on a recommendation and I was highly pleased by the results. Sure, it's not a classic worth viewing twice, but certainly a very good movie to watch at least once.

There's a few interesting twists and turns in this film but not nearly enough to save it. Ben Kingsley gives a wonderful performance as a man that has spent too many years looking through the eyes of monsters. Aaron Eckhart is intense as the agent on the hunt. However, Carrie-Anne Moss seems to have text messaged her performance in. The camera work looked good, but was so formula it could have been straight out of a cinematography textbook. It uses virtually every camera trick ever seen in every movie Hitchcock ever made. "Suspect Zero" has the potential to be a thoroughly spellbinding film, but manages to come up short. Out of five stars, I'd rate it 2.5.

Suspect Zero, a new mystery/horror/thriller/detective-FBI film, tries to make a lot of twists and turns in telling a story that is perhaps all-too-simple at the core. While the acting is fair by the leads (Kingsley, as a man who may or may not be the suspect, plays a tortured soul better than anyone I can think of; Eckhardt and Moss are credible if maybe mis-matched), the script is something of a turn-off. Sometimes it just doesn't make sense, despite a cameo from Robert Towne (uncredited on this site) as a professor who tries to give a little explaining to the FBI agent played by Eckhardt. It's not that the idea of it isn't bad, but it doesn't engage a viewer in a way other thrillers can.

What the film has going for it is the direction. This is E. Elias Merhige's third film after his impenetrable art-house film Begotten (arguably one of the most pretentious, deranged, if unique debuts of the 90's) and small success Shadow of a Vampire (a film that gave Malkovich and Dafoe excellent screen time as silent film icons). The style is more than flamboyant- it's madness. Merhige tries his best to get inside the atmosphere that this killer and it's tracker(s) are in, and he succeeds by almost trying too hard. It reminded me of a kind of avant-garde approach to directing one of those HBO thrillers you might catch late at night. While he doesn't do a job as memorable as 'Shadow', and outside of Kingsley and maybe Eckhardt doesn't elicit very good acting, him and Michael (Raging Bull/Taxi Driver) Chapman bring out a technical aspect with tints and angles and shots that aren't too diverting.

It's the kind of film that misses the mark of great, twisted, FBI-serial killer murder mysteries, and I would not seek it out to rent, but it didn't leave too sour of a taste in my mouth, and I didn't want to walk out of it midway either. It's average fare that could've been better, could've been a lot worse. (strong) C

I liked it. The filming is really good and the twists, while not really enigmatic, are good enough to grasp your attention. Eckhart gives a good performance here, and he's really believable as the FBI officer in search for the truth. Kingsley on the contrary seems not at his usual standard, but this is also a consequence of the weirdness of his character. The start is really good, from the cinematic point of view too: you'll think it's a classic horror movie (which is not the case). The ending is not at par with the first 4/5 of the movie but at that point you'll be willing to forgive the director because the rest of the movie is OK.

SUSPECT ZERO (2004) ** Ben Kingsley, Aaron Eckhart, Carrie-Anne Moss, Harry J. Lennix, Kevin Chamberlin, Chloe Russell, Nicole DeHuff, William Mapother. (Dir: E. Elias Merhige)

'Se7en' – 'Silence of the Lambs' = 'Zero'

Trying to make a serial killer film, a sub genre that appears to have overtaken the unstoppable killing machine teen slasher (think Jason or Freddy) that took horror films to another level, must be like attempting to build a snowman in July: not much fun and pointless since it's damn near impossible to perfect an impossibility.

Take the case of this unique perspective to a 15 minutes-of-fame and ticking category : a serial killer killing serial killers! OK now try to convince me for nearly two hours of my time why I should care? Well it was a good idea.

Anyway the premise of the latest style over substance take on it is having a disgraced FBI profiler named Mackelway (Eckhart) being reassigned to the desert of New Mexico when he finds the dullness only adding to his current state of blinding migraines (he chomps on aspirin like Chiclets) until a ghastly murder is found at the border – literally – with some follow up faxes sent directly to him. It seems a former specialty agent, O'Ryan (Sir Ben acting up a storm), who was assigned to a shadowy sect project entitled Icarus (read: getting too close to the sun; burning – foreshadowing of things to come) where highly intelligent applicants were able to 'see' the minds of serial killers at work and transcribing their thoughts into para psychological scribblings in charcoal pencil that would lead them to their quarry. Apparently it has affected O'Ryan to the point of obsession and causing him to act as a rogue executioner of the filth he was assigned to locate. What happens next is a series of murders of murderers that lead a grisly wake to some serious soul searching for one Agent Mackelway. To complicate matters his former partner – and ex-lover – Agent Kulok (Moss) has been called in to help him and his new prickly boss Charelton (Lennix also late of the 'Matrix' flicks) crack the case wide open.

I admit it seems a tad outrageous that someone could psychically forecast an upcoming crime however it is set in fiction and there was a cool 'X-Files' episode 'Unruhe' that had a similar story but it involved Polaroids instead of sketchings. Regardless you have to give the creative team an A for effort yet the screenplay by Zak Penn and Billy Ray is a Luke-warm reheating of 'Se7en' with Kingsley as an ersatz John Doe serving up justice with a nasty slicing off of the victims' eyelids to show what he sees they see and the 'Silence of the Lambs' backbiting of its federal peacekeepers at odds with what they cannot.

Eckhart seems wasted of his talent in a somewhat muted turn – he should be more tortured if that is what his character is implied to be and Moss is undeniably sleepwalking her way through the film no thanks to bad lighting making one of the screen's most lovely women look downright homely. Kingsley has proven to be a very versatile actor notably ditching his Gandhi peace for sinister doings in 'Sexy Beast' a few years ago and here he makes the most of his deeply troubled psychic warrior with a few moments of glass sharp scares.

Director Merhige a relative newcomer employs the usual shaky camera work with some interesting visual courtesy of his ace cinematographer Michael Chapman with its desaturated colors and vibrantly dark moments that underlie the terror at hand. Too bad it couldn't shed it in a more intriguing light.