Cinema Uprising by Steve Evans
The Bone Collector Dir: Phillip Noyce. Starring Denzel Washington, Angelina Jolie, Queen Latifah, Ed O’Neill and Michael Rooker.
The pitch: A quadriplegic NYC homicide detective helps his protégé track down a brilliant serial killer obsessed with true crime.
After a solid first hour of chilling suspense, this high-concept thriller unravels completely in the final, disappointing reel. The killer’s identity may come out of the blue, but the rationale for the killings is so preposterous, so dependent on nearly impossible coincidences, that we just don’t believe it. Washington plays the immobilized detective who feels suicidal four years after a freak accident left him paralyzed below the neck, save for just enough movement in his left index finger to allow manipulation of a computer trackball. His computer, television monitor and telephone are all voice activated, which is crucial to the climax. Before the accident, Washington’s character was a renowned detective specializing in analysis of forensic evidence. Confined to a motorized bed, forced to gulp oxygen from a straw strapped to his headrest, now he only wants to die. The role is daunting â€` Washington is limited to facial expressions and changes in the tone of his voice. His nurse, the motherly Latifah, refuses to give up on her patient, even though he wants “to check out of this life.â€? Jolie is a novice cop who comes upon a grisly crime scene: a multimillionaire developer buried under tons of gravel near a railroad line. Only his hands are exposed, fingers frozen with rigor mortis as though clutching at the air. The dead man’s wife is still missing, a captive of a serial killer who leaves maddeningly obscure clues as to his whereabouts and motives. Washington’s friend and fellow detective, O’Neill, assigns Jolie to the case, which is a helluva promotion for a street cop. But O’Neill has his reasons. Jolie can be Washington’s surrogate at the crime scene. And he can communicate with her via two-way radio as they try to catch the killer. It gives Washington a reason to live. The killer’s methods are markedly gruesome. Some victims are flayed to the bone. One is boiled alive by steam jetting from an exhaust pipe (even in shadow, these scenes are grisly and graphic). With Washington’s deductive skills, Jolie is able to draw closer to the psychopath, despite the interference of a territorial police captain (Rooker) â€` one of those needlessly stupid characters whose purpose is to get in the way of the heroes just so they can prove him wrong, again and again. Rooker and the film deserve better than this old screenwriter’s crutch. Then again, so does the climax, which hinges on a ridiculous number of circumstances coming together with precision timing. Not in New York City, baby. The movie backs itself into a corner, since a confrontation between the immobile Washington and the killer is inevitable. But how to show these two in a battle of wits, a fight to the death, without stretching plausibility to the breaking point? It’s a question the filmmakers should have answered before shooting the picture and tacking on a coda that even Frank Capra would have found corny.
Rated R for violence, gruesome murders and language.
Cinema Uprising copyright ïƒ` 1999 by Stephen B. Evans. All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, without the prior, written permission of the author. The author may be contacted at: evans@cstone.net
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