By Guylaine Cadorette
Story
Dallas FBI Agent Thomas Mackelway (
Aaron Eckhart) ignored extradition procedures that caused serial killer Raymond Starkey to walk--and landed the detective a fat demotion to a remote branch of the agency in Albuquerque. But before he even gets a chance to settle in his new digs, Mackelway is called to investigate the nearby murder of traveling salesman Harold Speck, whose body was found with one eyelid sliced off. On top of his face rests a sheet of paper with a red circle and a line drawn through it--the telltale mark of a serial killer. When the next victim turns out to be Starkey, the serial killer who once eluded Mackelway, the agent realizes this is not a textbook case. As he delves deeper into the investigation, he discovers the victims in this murderous spree have something in common: They have all committed manslaughter themselves. With the help of his partner Fran Kulok (
Carrie-Anne Moss), Mackelway connects Benjamin O'Ryan (
Ben Kingsley) to the crimes, a loner who seems to be taunting the agents to find him, as well as marauding serial killers who have managed to evade authorities. O'Ryan, it turns out, was one of five subjects in a secret government project dubbed "remote viewing," which trained FBI agents to see distant locations using clairvoyance. What Mackelway has to figure out is whether O'Ryan is an antihero ridding the world of dangerous criminals, or a cold-blooded killing machine.
Acting
Ever heard the saying, "Keep it simple, stupid"? The makers of
Suspect Zero sure haven't. The film, which boasts a surprisingly impressive roster including
Kingsley,
Eckhart and
Moss, benefits from strong and touching performances from all its cast members but fails to successfully exploit them. Veteran thesp
Kingsley demonstrates an impressive range here as O'Ryan, a gray character who is both wickedly sinister and neurotically compassionate. Not many actors have the ability to make moviegoers empathize with a ruthless, bloody killer, but
Kingsley does and he does it faithfully, despite the lousy script that turns his potentially fascinating character into a cliché.
Eckhart, who plays the film's main character and protagonist Mackelway, churns out a decent performance as the disgruntled agent, but the role is too paint-by-numbers. Like most cinematic tough cops before him, Mackelway breaks the rules to apprehend the bad guys and is so rugged that he chomps aspirin like Tic-Tacs. There is not a glimmer of originality in the character, much like
Moss's Kulok. Predictably, Kulok and Mackelway have a tangled romantic past, and although there is some chemistry between the two actors, it isn't really needed in the story. Their liaison is just one of too many distracting sub-plots.
Direction
Director
Elias Merhige, who four years ago helmed the brilliant supernatural thriller
Shadow of the Vampire, carries his artistic vision to a contemporary setting here, but in doing so loses some of the mystical elements that made his horror feature so unique.
Merhige gives us dark and sinister sequences similar in style to
Vampire, but in a modern setting they come across as derivative of director
David Fincher's 1995 crime thriller
Seven. In fact, it's almost impossible not to draw comparisons between the two. In
Suspect Zero, for example, Mackelway enters a basement dwelling without working electricity so that the only thing discernible to the audience is spotlighted by the agent's flashlight--it's extremely similar to an early scene from
Seven. On the surface, the themes are also comparable: Both films involve an antagonist playing cat-and-mouse games with a particular authority figure. What is different is
Suspect scribes Zak Penn and Billy Ray's very distinctive slant with the whole remote viewing phenomenon. But unfortunately, the angle becomes a casualty of
Merhige's overzealous desire to make this film a visual tour de force.