Untraceable

Just some quick notes:

Movie Review: Untraceable

If you downloaded the movie, or saw it for free some other way, you still might have paid too much.  Maybe if you like the “Saw” series with a techie twist and too much jargon that didn’t always make sense, this might work for you.

 

Basic plot: FBI anti-hacker group is fed info about an “untraceable” website in Portland, OR where, first a kitten, and then people are killed in gruesome ways in a speed directly related to the number of people watching.  The cat is poisoned, the next guy is bled to death (using an anti-coagulant), and next guy is cooked alive by heat lamps.  The killer taunts the FBI lead investigator by putting up live video of her house and kid.  Eventually, the FBI sidekick figures out the connection between the victims and promptly gets himself caught by the killer because he likes going on blind dates with people he meets online.  While he is being eaten alive by hydrochloric acid, the sends out a blinking Morse Code message that leads his partner to an online suicide video that links all the victims to the killer.  While the lead FBI agent is travelling across the bridge where the suicide takes place (the suicide is of the father of the killer), all the power in her car goes out, but she manages to break a window, run to a call box and call the police who quickly send multiple units to her location.  Bad news for her is that she is somewhat stupid and GETS BACK IN THE CAR WITHOUT CHECKING THE BACK SEAT instead of waiting for the police and is promptly tasered and captured.  Big Surprise.  Next the killer puts her up for live dying by slowing lowering her onto a spinning roto-tiller.  Luckily, she is not as incapacitated as every other victim and can swing back and forth until she manages to grab a pipe, hurt the killer, escape from her bonds, and after a brief struggle shoots the killer multiple times moments before the FBI breaks down the door.  It never exactly explains how they managed to find her location when they couldn’t find any of the other locations before the person died.  Lots of silly things that they could have done, but didn’t.

 

The worst part of the movie was the very beginning when the FBI agent catches someone online stealing credit card info and promptly (within minutes) sends a SWAT team to the house they THINK the there is at (they don’t know for sure because it’s a wireless network and they are just GUESSING at who it could be).  The SWAT team breaks down the down without even knocking (a “no knock warrant” without a warrant on a petty thief??) and go in with automatic weapons to arrest this guy and his son.  Why is this the worst part of the movie?  Because its portrayed like that is part of every day life and if you download music, you should expect Big Brother to bust down your door.  Whatever happened to “due process”?  Those are the actions of a Police State, not a free country.

 

In related news, a man in Canada was found not guilty of killing a police officer who was serving a no-knock warrant to the wrong house.  I’m sorry for the family of the cop, but glad that Canada at least still knows what liberty means.