Bone Collector, The (1999)

reviewed by
Harvey S. Karten


THE BONE COLLECTOR

Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Universal Pictures Director: Phillip Noyce Writer: Jeremy Iacone, novel by Jeffrey Deaver Cast: Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah, Ed O'Neill, Michael Rooker, Luis Guzman, Leland Orser, Mike McGlone

During the greedy 1980s the word "mentor" became the most fashionable term in the American lexicon. Mentors are people who "adopt" young, rising workers, show them the ropes, and ease their way into the fast track of steady promotions. "The Bone Collector" is about such a person, unusual in that he is frightfully handicapped, but there is no greed or economic motivation involved in his relationship with the younger member. This is a buddy movie, a police drama, a revenge fantasy and even a romance between two folks who--in the typical Hollywood formula--have bones to pick with each other in the early part but collect nothing but good will as their affiliation deepens. A watchable movie despite its lack of originality, "The Bone Collector" takes off from the classic "Seven," David Fincher's portrait of a serial killer who wallows in the depths of human depravity, deliberately leaving clues around his murders to taunt the police. While Phillip Noyce, its director, exploits the appeal of one of Hollywood's handsomest, Denzel Washington, the picture often look like a showcase for the seductive Angelina Jolie--who has yet to prove that she can act--though New York Times critic Stephen Holden cites her "sensuous lips and eyes that burn with a soft, melting fire" and calls her the most alluring of the young Hollywood stars.

The Martin Bregman production taken from Jeffrey Deaver's novel and a screenplay by Jeremy Iacone has been cited by some as a picture for strong stomachs only and for masochists. Even Roger Ebert downgraded the production for what he considers the excessive gore. While not exceptionally violent, some scenes do present a challenge for the sensitive eyes. We see in mid-range the face of a New York University student who had been bloodied and left tied up in a subterranean hell for the rats to devour. We see as well the corpse of a middle-aged woman, similarly handcuffed to a pipe, who has been executed by a long burst of steam. In one instance, an older man is found drowned at the pier but his young granddaughter is rescued, which seems to prove that commercial movies can dispense with the old but are fearful of letting the audience believe a vulnerable little girl with a life ahead of her should be left for dead.

The story opens on a policewoman assigned to counsel youths, Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie), who happens upon a man whose hand is showing through the gravel in which he is buried, a finger amputated with his wife's wedding band on the stub. This signals us that the killer is mocking the police by deliberately leaving a clue and that we are bound to find similar victims of a serial killer. The most frightening images, however, are not of the bloodied, beaten and ravaged victims of this sick personality but the sight of various passengers getting into the killer's taxicab only to be locked in, blocked by impenetrable glass from exiting the vehicle.

Much of the drama takes place in the spacious apartment of Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington), a forensic expert with the police department who, four years previous, was paralyzed by a falling beam. He now has a intricate array of machinery to direct forensics and a full-time nurse, Thelma (Queen Latifah), to care for him and administer oxygen when he undergoes seizures. Since Rhyme has no feeling except in one finger, he is suicidal, particularly fearing the one big seizure that will leave him a vegetable. Though he has made arrangements with a friendly doctor for a "final transition," the case involving this serial killer awakens his interest in life. He is particularly fond of Officer Donaghy, and pushes her against her will into pursuing the case.

The plot is loaded with absurdities, but that's the name of the game with commercial murder mysteries. The audience, like Officer Rhyme, tries to figure out who the killer is, but unfortunately--in the picture's major flaw--the perp is no one you could possibly expect. He is like "a temp, in for the day," as Roger Ebert says, a psychotic individual bent on revenge whose clues would not likely be of use to any with less prescience than the two New York cops who decipher them-- with the aid of wild coincidences such as one that occurs in a store stocking old, turn-of-the-century books.

New York looks great. The skyscrapers framed at night are majestic, enough to bring in any tourists who might otherwise have been scared away by yet another picture about that (formerly) high-crime city. The studio shots, which serve as the subterranean hells of sewer systems and an unused subway station, are something out of Dante. We can even overlook the outrageous coincidences and out-of-the- blue killer as typical contrivances of commercial murder mysteries, because "The Bone Collector" is gripping and Ms. Jolie, for all her tentativeness in the acting department, is pleasant on the eyes.

Rated R.  Running Time: 118 minutes.  (C) 1999
Harvey Karten

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