Director: Phillip Noyce
Starring: Denzel Washington,Angelina Jolie,Queen Latifah,Michael Rooker,Luis Guzman,Mike McGlone,Ed O’Neill
The Bone Collector is like The Silence of the Lambs meets Seven,
except piss poor. The film is completely frustrating for a number of reasons.
First being the aforementioned way that The Bone Collector is completely
derivative from previous serial killer flicks. By now, this genre has become a
once-a-month delivery to theaters, and like telemarketing calls, herpes, and
Alan Thicke, you just wish they’d go away.
The serial killer in The Bone Collector doesn’t even give us an
interesting gimmick. Instead, he/she/it just spends elaborate time constructing
the crime scenes. So well-planned are these crime scenes that the police force
sends in their investigator ONE person at a time, such that it won’t be
disturbed. Does this make sense to anyone? I mean, maybe I’m the only person
who considers that the killer, well, may still be hanging out there.
The person sent in most of the time is Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie), the
new protégé of former cop Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington). This brings on
irritating point number two. The Bone Collector is a really bad movie
with some really good performances. The two leads do what they can, and Queen
Latifah and Ed O’Neill also chip in nicely.
Then we come to poor Michael Rooker, who gets stuck with a role that seems to
be the idiot screenwriter’s fallback in every action movie - the authority
figure who is wrong about everything. Die Hard used this, but in The
Bone Collector, it’s even more shameless because we are constantly led to
believe that because Rooker’s Captain makes so many bone-headed statements, he
is probably the main suspect. But, if you’re buying that notion, then there’s
a bridge I want to sell you.
The film isn’t without its little romantic subplot between Rhyme and
Donaghy. Denzel, however, is confined to a bed in this movie after a crippling
injury, describing himself as “one finger, two shoulders, and a brain.” A
scene where Jolie caresses Washington’s finger is played out as though it
should be sensual. No bone collected here.
The villain uses killings that reek of desperation, as though they’re
trying to shock the audience, maybe outdo the serial killers of past films. Even
the killer’s big revelation scene is horribly anticlimactic, and I’m pretty
sure that the cancellation of Charles in Charge would’ve supplied a
better motive.
The killer’s clues are delicately placed, and one recurring element
consists of pieces of paper so small, they have to be held by tweezers.
Naturally, our detectives find every last one of them, leading to a bookstore
where Jolie has the unfortunate luck of the RIGHT books falling upon her,
allowing her to open to the RIGHT page where our next murder is illustrated. And
if this isn’t perfect enough, it leads to another TERRIBLE scene where an
older man drowns, but the young girl with him is resuscitated. She doesn’t say
anything or appear in the film again, only there at that moment to give the
audience a sigh of relief that someone innocent cheated death. The Bone
Collector, however, drowns in clichés long before.
