{grate 2}
Some of the Internet Movie Database’s keywords for
“Saw”-in-cyberspace “Untraceable” include: snuff, torture, serial killer and
shirtless male bondage. At least if super-MILF Diane Lane isn’t your draw,
you’re not left on the sexual gratification lurch. You get enough of both in
another crime-thriller knockoff about the dark side of curiosity.

Told from the perspective of a cop single-mom doing her part
to stop illegal downloads, the movie comes across like the Motion Picture
Association of America’s
“Piracy is Theft” commercials. But instead of asking, “You wouldn’t steal a
purse, would you?” the question is “You wouldn’t log on to a snuff site if it
would help kill the victim, would you?” For most of us, sadly, the answer is a
firm yes. The movie opens with FBI cybercops employing every trick in the
Gestapo/KGB manual of yesteryear to bust a 12-year-old boy for hacking credit
cards to buy toys. The kid is whisked away from his family before dawn.
Everyone gives each other high fives. Dubya would be proud. Immediately after
little Billy is behind bars, a real criminal emerges.

Someone is torturing a cat and broadcasting it online with
streaming video. Agent Marsh and her online dating sidekick Griffin Dowd (Colin
Hanks) want to shut this sicko down, but can’t because his transmission is —
dramatic pause — untraceable! Desperate for more computing power, the heroes
beg their superior for access to the National Security Agency’s big-guns super
computer.

But their boss doesn’t mind a few tortured cats, ignoring
their concerns until a man turns up on the site, tied to a bed frame with the
Web site’s logo, Killwithme.com, etched on his chest. As they gather around the
monitor to watch, the victim is injected with a serum that prevents blood from
clotting. As more people visit the site, the dosage increases until he bleeds
to death.

From there the chase is on to catch the killer. Each new
victim draws more attention from the press and a complicit American audience
can’t help but watch. As the viewers increase, the victims die, faster and
faster, while the killer absolves himself of blame. The message is made even
clearer in an FBI statement to the press, “We are the murder weapon!”

“Untraceable” fails not for copycatting genre icons or for
leaving out the gratuitous nudity, but for overreaching political statements.
The Web site only allows American web-goers, obviously commenting on the amoral
popularity of shock videos like “Faces of Death” that crowd the Internet. Less
obvious, but no less pretentious, are the fascist overtones. There’s a strong
desire to condemn the film’s glorification of belligerent FBI actions, but when
the audience cheers at the most offensive moments, it’s hard to deny how
effectively our American police state is portrayed.

No one who sees this movie is there to hear good
storytelling. Like the audiences of “Hostel,” “Saw” or any other torture-porn
entertainment, these people buy tickets to revel in gore. And they get plenty.
Not quite as inventive as “Saw” tortures, our latest cyber killer (yes, they’ve
coined a new crime) burns one man alive with heat lamps, boils another in
sulfuric acid and — most disgusting of all — snares a kitten in a rat trap only
to watch it slowly die. Lulu the cat was clearly animatronic, but that doesn’t
mean you can’t cry for her.