I came out of this movie liking it a lot, but the more I think about it, the more questions I have, and the worse my overall impression has become.
The story concerns Tom Mackelway (Aaron Ecjhart), a disgraced FBI agent who has just come off of six month's suspension for "forcibly extraditing" a suspected serial killer from Mexico to the U.S. Now in the Albuquerque FBI office, he soon starts receiving faxes of missing person reports from person or persons unknown.
It turns out that there is a killer out there who has murdered at least two people and is faxing clues to Mackelway. Following a trail of mutilated bodies, and clues left for them, Mackelway and his partner Fran Kulok (Carrie-Anne Moss) work to identify and find him. This killer (Ben Kingsley) also has the ability of "remote viewing," that is, seeing things from a great distance with his mind. He sends the results of these viewing sessions to Mackelway, but why? That is one of the many questions Mackelway (and the audience) have to answer.
This is one of those movies that I have very mixed feelings about. On the one hand, the performances are all good, especially Ben Kingsley's. I swear, it's getting a little boring at how consistently great this guy is. It's too bad he doesn't make much of an appearance until about the halfway point of the movie. E. Elias Merhige's direction is good, but nothing memorable (although Kingsley's remote viewing sessions are pretty intriguing). The failure of this movie comes with the script. It's a mess.By the time the movie was over, there were so many loose ends and unanswered questions that my sense of closure and satisfaction was diminished somewhat.
Maybe I'm being a little hard on Suspect Zero, because there's a lot of good here. Some of the ideas put forward are really intriguing. The trouble is, there are too many of them and what impact some of them might have had is diluted. But like I say, there's some cool stuff and good performances, and the final confrontation between Kingsley and Eckart is powerful. It certainly wasn't a waste of time so much as a waste of potential.
The story concerns Tom Mackelway (Aaron Ecjhart), a disgraced FBI agent who has just come off of six month's suspension for "forcibly extraditing" a suspected serial killer from Mexico to the U.S. Now in the Albuquerque FBI office, he soon starts receiving faxes of missing person reports from person or persons unknown.
It turns out that there is a killer out there who has murdered at least two people and is faxing clues to Mackelway. Following a trail of mutilated bodies, and clues left for them, Mackelway and his partner Fran Kulok (Carrie-Anne Moss) work to identify and find him. This killer (Ben Kingsley) also has the ability of "remote viewing," that is, seeing things from a great distance with his mind. He sends the results of these viewing sessions to Mackelway, but why? That is one of the many questions Mackelway (and the audience) have to answer.
This is one of those movies that I have very mixed feelings about. On the one hand, the performances are all good, especially Ben Kingsley's. I swear, it's getting a little boring at how consistently great this guy is. It's too bad he doesn't make much of an appearance until about the halfway point of the movie. E. Elias Merhige's direction is good, but nothing memorable (although Kingsley's remote viewing sessions are pretty intriguing). The failure of this movie comes with the script. It's a mess.By the time the movie was over, there were so many loose ends and unanswered questions that my sense of closure and satisfaction was diminished somewhat.
Maybe I'm being a little hard on Suspect Zero, because there's a lot of good here. Some of the ideas put forward are really intriguing. The trouble is, there are too many of them and what impact some of them might have had is diluted. But like I say, there's some cool stuff and good performances, and the final confrontation between Kingsley and Eckart is powerful. It certainly wasn't a waste of time so much as a waste of potential.