It�s strange that this Morgan Freeman thriller got produced as a follow up to the far from sensational Kiss The Girls, a standard hunt for a psycho, but then again I suppose it just goes to show that Silence of the Lambs has a lot to answer for. The spider of the title is another meticulous nutter who abducts a senator�s daughter and then immediately tells Freeman�s profiler, Dr. Alex Cross. He is joined by the Secret Service agent who feels she was to blame for the kidnapper�s success and together they try to unravel a trail of clues that seems to have been deliberately laid down during years of planning.
As you�ve hopefully already guessed, there is not a shred of originality in the movie. The genre is so well worn that obviously there are very few new tricks to be pulled, so we get a trio of lead characters who are single-minded but, inevitably, all have past troubles (and that irritating habit of just bringing them up in conversation seemingly for no other reason than to say �look, my character has depth too!�). An intelligent but psychotic criminal, who tries to defy stereotypes but therefore perversely enough falls into exactly that mould. Apparently his plan is breathtaking in scope, but we only see the quick snatch and grab, the rest of the time he just seems to shoot people who might find him out so his brilliance is completely lost.
The course of the investigation turns up yet more familiar scenes, including that recurring fallacy that armed with a computer, internet access (obviously they know something about narrowing a Google search that the rest of us don�t) and in this case a digital camera, you can do or find just about anything, including a bit of webcam use that rivals Blade Runner�s photo analysis. But then again if you think you can protect your work with a password, you are mistaken because the hero only needs to scan back through the script to discover your earlier keenness to talk of your past means he can crack it straight away.
Other clich�s and painful plot holes come in rapid succession, so that by the time you get to the expected final twist you don�t really care what�s going to happen next. Which is a good job really because the final confrontation is unforgivably limp, and while not particularly easy to guess, it�s not especially interesting either. |
