And it’s not vague at all that ‘The Bone Collector’ is essentially
a
paycheck for all involved.
It carries in stride a couple of obvious cliches that we expect
from
Hollywood thrillers nowadays (the superhumanencyclopedic brain
of Washington,
Amelia’s deep dark secret and certainly, the archetypical camaraderie
of archetypical
cop characters). But all of these distractions I take in stride. Instead,
I
was really disappointed to see director Phillip Noyce take what
could easily
have been a mediocre thriller with some nail-biting setpieces
and turn it
into a really, really boring and repetitious collection of anti-climatic,
three-dimensional
crime scene photos. Jolie plays Amelia, a beat cop solicited by Lincoln
Rhyme
(Washinton) into assisting with a case involving a serial killer who
leaves countless clues
at the scene. The kickers : predictably, Jolie wants nothing
to do with it and Washington,
in what must have looked really enticing to the actor on the page,
spends the duration of
the film bedridden by a nasty accident that befalls him in the opening
moments. He can
move only his head, shoulders (knees and toes! Knees and toes!) and
one finger.
The film is so assuming and so thinly written, it’s the kind of
movie that
would usually rely soley on it’s shocks and it’s kinetic editing
to thrill you.
But you can cross that off your list straightaway - the thrill is gone.
Every time Amelia
attempts to throw her inexperienced self into the dark,
uncertain crime
scenes, Noyce turns up the music and cuts back to Lincoln, grilling
it over,
lying in his bed - - leaving any intensity the film could hope
to garner dead in the water.
When you do realize you’ve been had by the somewhat generic filmmaking
techniques,
you’ll also find it irritating that the film’s one attempt at
uniqueness fails
miserably. The killer is attempting to share the responsibility
with the cops
by leaving clues that they must decipher in a certain amount
of time or - -
whoops, dead victim (except children, a studio/multiplex no-no).
Hey, anybody
recall that very technique from a certain film whose title is
also a number?
Here’s a list of other silly stuff: The purposefully enigmatic
pseudo-romance
between Washington (especially when he’s comatose after a stroke
at one
point); constant cutaways to Lincoln (who hoards a ransom of
high tech
gadgets in his apartment) as Amelia investigates crime scenes
and speaks to
him through a microphone (Simply solution : Use a remote video
transmission.
Plenty of possibilities there); and who could forget the computer
generated
rat that lunges at one of the victims - - a classic shot that
culls a classic
unintentional laugh from me.
The film attempts so much. Washington and Jolie are especially muted
and
Rooker, O’Neil and Guzman are mere window dressing. The ambience of
dusty,
run-down New York settings, most of them dark and underground is continually
suffocated by the film’s obvious audience-pleasing clumsiness. And
while I’d really like
be polite, to close my eyes and put two and two together; sit tongue
bitten and take the
generous helping of patronizing the film is content to give me - -
that just seems
somewhat impossible. ‘The Bone Collector’ is too awful not to warrant
a cheap thrill,
on my part, in the verbal deconstruction of it’s expert crappiness.