Suspect Zero

I'm not going to take too long dismissing this one. I want to watch Hotel Rwanda in a little bit here, so I don't have all day.

There was a time, years ago, when the script for Suspect Zero was kind of a hot commodity in Hollywood. The high concept says it all: a government agent finds himself hunting a serial killer who kills other serial killers.

Bum-dum-dum, da-duuuuuuuuuuuuuuum. What will happen? If you kill serial killers, are you yourself a serial killer? Or a hero? Oh the possibilities!

So, I can only assume the movie has been made much dumber in the translation from script to movie. In screenwriting circles, by the way, I've often heard a theory bounced around that the best scripts don't always make the best movies. Sometimes, a script works so perfectly in its own right, as reading material, it winds up disappointing once it's made into a finished film.

I don't know...Anyway, the movie Suspect Zero really stinks. It's an incredibly unsatisfying formula film without an original or interesting concept to add to its genre. I like serial killer movies, but they have grown incredibly stale. Someone needs to make another Silence of the Lambs or Seven or Man Bites Dog and pump some life into this genre.



For example, here's a conversation I had recently at Laser Blazer...why do serial killer movies always have to approach the material in the same way. Always. Every single one. It's always about the duality of good and evil, about how the cop and killer are mirror images of one another. The evil that the cop dwells in all day begins to rub off on him, to affect his life outside of work, and he becomes haunted. And the killer reminds him all the time about how similar they are, and about how they are inextricably tied.

So the killer keeps baiting the cop, leading to some final confrontation where either (1) the cop is forced to face the truth, that he is no better than the criminals he chases or (2) the cop kills the serial killer, reaffirming his or her place as a societal authority and arbiter of justice. It's usually #2 in Hollywood movies.

Anyway, that's the plot of Suspect Zero. And every other movie in this genre from the past decade. Even the good ones, like Silence of the Lambs, basically adhere to it. As near as I can tell, it comes from all these Hong Kong films from the late 80's and early 90's that so influenced American directors. Guys like John Woo always made films about the dual nature of law enforcement - about how hanging out with criminals and studying their behavior changes the outlook and personality of police officers.

But, seriously guys, enough is enough. Why not make a movie about a cop who loves busting serial killers, and who isn't bothered by the gruesomeness of his profession at all? Or about a guy who busts serial killers, but who otherwise is a charming, affable guy with a great personality. Like if Walter Matthau ever made a serial killer movie...his cop would just be a regular guy with a weird job.

Anyway, back to the movie at hand. Ben Kingsley plays your serial killer. He's methodical, brilliant, disturbed and possibly delusional. He likes to strangle people with wire until their eyes bug out of their head. And he's sending messages and taunting a federal agent (Aaron Eckhart). Then Carrie-Anne Moss shows up as Eckhart's unwilling partner, and the movie limps into auto-pilot.

I think the biggest problem here is that the movie's set-up leaves us waiting for some big reveal, some deeper reason to maintain interest in this flat story. It's pretty obvious from about 15 minutes in that Kinglsey's character is going around killing other serial killers, so when it takes the cops nearly an hour to figure this out, we assume there's a reason. Why give the game away to us so early unless it's a red herring, some misdirection keeping us from seeing the real truth?

But there is no deeper truth that I could detect. The movie basically goes where you expect, leads to the confrontation you expect, and winds up right back where it started. This is a story with absolutely no forward momentum, a collection of events that aren't particularly interesting, nice to look at or even clearly explained. There were several whole chase sequences I found it difficult to follow, several scenes in which I couldn't really tell what the characters were talking about or why it was important, and in particular, the appearance and disappearance of the Carrie-Anne Moss character was jarring. I thought for a while she might be the killer, simply because her presence is never adequately explained.

Oh, and then there's the concept of a "Suspect Zero." This might be considered a "spoiler," I guess, if you want to go in to the movie totally fresh, but it's not the sort of thing that would ruin the experience to know about. Plus, the movie sucks, and I'm very trustworthy, so why would you see it now that you've read this review?

Anyway, Kingsley believes that there is a serial killer who defies any and all categorizations. He avoids any of the behavior we associate with serial killers (no victim patterns, different techniques every time, he moves around a lot, etc.) Therefore, he's impossible to profile. So both the cop and killer wind up searching for Suspect Zero, hoping to encounter each other along the way.

I like the idea of a serial killer who can't be caught because he's too sane. These movies are always about figuring out the lunatic psychopathology of the killer so he can be caught. It might be fun to see a movie where the guy was purposefully random to throw everyone off track. Even make them think there were different killers for each victim.

But the movie refuses to have any fun with the concept. Once it sets up the existance of Suspect Zero, there's no attempt to explore the idea. It's just a name now that's been applied to an unseen antagonist. This is an example of a solid premise completely wasted, along with the talents of a few good actors.

The director is E. Elias Merhige, whose previous film was Shadow of the Vampire. That was a very nice-looking film with a great premise - F. W. Murnau makes his classic vampire film Nosferatu using a real-life vampire as an actor - that utterly failed to entertain, or even amuse. Suspect Zero is similar, except that it lacks the visual grace of Shadow of the Vampire, relying on overly dark photography to distinctly lesser effect.