The niece of a Washington, D. C., police psychologist disappears from her campus in North Carolina. The psychologist (Freeman) goes down to help out the local cops. Shortly, another young woman (Judd), an intern at the local Regional Center is likewise kidnapped. We follow her story as she is taken to an underground dungeon, drugged and bound and raped. She escapes. Judd and Freeman join forces. They match the local kidnappings, which sometimes end in murder, with others that seem to follow the same pattern in California. They fly to California and discover that a cosmetic surgeon who lives in Marina Del Ray (all L.A. doctors live in Marina Del Ray) has ordered a huge supply of the rarely used drug that was used on Judd during her captivity.
If you find this a little confusing, wait until you see the movie. The plot is not simply complicated, but riddled with lacunae. Unless I blinked at the wrong moment, the movie doesn't explain the relationship between the East Coast killer and the West Coast killer who is duplicating him. I also have no idea how the Eastern killer got hold of the same drug that the West Coast killer is using. And I don't understand why, just before they fly to L.A., Freeman rejects Judd's suggestion that they notify the F.B.I. It's impossible for anyone to know why, after Judd escapes from the killer's hideaway, she stumbles through perhaps 100 yard of forest then jumps into the river, and yet the police and the FBI still can't find the obvious superterranian entrance to the killer's lair. I mean, why couldn't they figure out that it must be located along a two or three miles stretch of the river, less than 100 yeard from the left bank? Why do they refer to benzodiazepines as "benzos" when docs call them "diazepines"? I don't know why the killers off some of the girls and preserve others. The first girl who is offed is Heidi Schanz. The killer deserves to be strung up by his Buster Browns for that. I don't care how many rules she's broken. No additional clarity is provided by the director, who seems to have found out that a camera can be hand held. And the editing introduces further murk. Quick cuts of Ashley Judd practicing her kick boxing in the dungeon, with an occasional brief shot of her doing nothing in particular. Irrelevant tanker trucks that zoom suddenly out of nowhere and almost run Freeman down at a tense moment.
Why go on? Some people will undoubtedly like it because watching it will be comforting. Like all rituals watching a variation on the serial killer theme may provide a fixed point in a changing and disappointing universe. Well, a chaque a son gout. I don't know how many times I've heard Stan Getz's solos with Woody Herman's band, but I could listen to them a hundred more times. Speaking of music, somebody plays a sprightly jig from a suite by Bach and later another piece. The first is really difficult. The violinist deserves a medal for introducing some unexpectedly fresh airs into an otherwise stale production.
A shame, too, because the leads are both imposing performers in their different ways.
If you find this a little confusing, wait until you see the movie. The plot is not simply complicated, but riddled with lacunae. Unless I blinked at the wrong moment, the movie doesn't explain the relationship between the East Coast killer and the West Coast killer who is duplicating him. I also have no idea how the Eastern killer got hold of the same drug that the West Coast killer is using. And I don't understand why, just before they fly to L.A., Freeman rejects Judd's suggestion that they notify the F.B.I. It's impossible for anyone to know why, after Judd escapes from the killer's hideaway, she stumbles through perhaps 100 yard of forest then jumps into the river, and yet the police and the FBI still can't find the obvious superterranian entrance to the killer's lair. I mean, why couldn't they figure out that it must be located along a two or three miles stretch of the river, less than 100 yeard from the left bank? Why do they refer to benzodiazepines as "benzos" when docs call them "diazepines"? I don't know why the killers off some of the girls and preserve others. The first girl who is offed is Heidi Schanz. The killer deserves to be strung up by his Buster Browns for that. I don't care how many rules she's broken. No additional clarity is provided by the director, who seems to have found out that a camera can be hand held. And the editing introduces further murk. Quick cuts of Ashley Judd practicing her kick boxing in the dungeon, with an occasional brief shot of her doing nothing in particular. Irrelevant tanker trucks that zoom suddenly out of nowhere and almost run Freeman down at a tense moment.
Why go on? Some people will undoubtedly like it because watching it will be comforting. Like all rituals watching a variation on the serial killer theme may provide a fixed point in a changing and disappointing universe. Well, a chaque a son gout. I don't know how many times I've heard Stan Getz's solos with Woody Herman's band, but I could listen to them a hundred more times. Speaking of music, somebody plays a sprightly jig from a suite by Bach and later another piece. The first is really difficult. The violinist deserves a medal for introducing some unexpectedly fresh airs into an otherwise stale production.
A shame, too, because the leads are both imposing performers in their different ways.