| Along Came a Spider |
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| Rating: Poor Distributor: Paramount Pictures MPAA Rating: R Running Length: 1 hour, 43 minutes Release Date: April 6th, 2001 (wide) Director: Lee Tamahori Cast: Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, Micheal Wincott, Billy Burke, Penelope Ann Miller, Anton Yelchin, and Jay O. Sanders. |
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| Plot: Detective Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) retires after the loss of his partner. However, Cross returns to his post after he receives personal messages from a kidnapper; the man talking to Cross has kidnapped a Senator's daughter. He is forced to solve the case, and find a way to uncover the secrets of the ambitious kidnapper. The kidnapper hopes to make the crime of the century. Furthermore, Cross has to take a secret service officer (Monica Potter) as his partner. |
| Critique: Along Came a Spider is an atrocious film, that fails on every level. The one strength of the film is watching Morgan Freeman act, but he is flooded by awful material. Additionally, the rest of the cast, with the exception of the villian, perform terribly. The film contains gigantic plot holes, its conflicts are ridiculous, and its climax is absurd. Furthermore, there is no tension, and the film is poorly executed. The director, Lee Tamahori displays no credibality at the helm, as the film is a failure artistically. Moreover, the film feels like a half attempt at a TV movie premise. Subsequently, the it is tedious and boring. It's definately one of those films where you can laugh at numerous scenes, even though the film is attempting to be serious. The film is choppy, and that probably means the book was poorly adapted. Its interesting how every year we see many films where gifted stars like Morgan Freeman choose terrible projects. Some of the many other examples of this pattern are The Patriot, Shaft, and Where the Money Is. It seems that these stars could have not entered the projects after reading the terrible scripts; the script of 'Spider' doomed the film before Tamahori could have done anything. Perhaps these popular and respected actors may have needed the recognition that only a weak star vehicle could provide. It calls attention to the star even if he is surrounded by trash. Nonetheless, its possible the stars truthfully believed they were going to be involved in a terrific motion picture. Along Came a Spider is without a doubt a complete failure. Its only redeeming quality is Morgan Freeman's presence. Moreover, the film is atrocious in every category of filmmaking. I highly recommend not seeing this awful mess of a motion picutre. review by supernothingman |