Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Irresistible gore: ‘Untraceable’ is hard to watch — but you will

The luridly voyeuristic, no-holds-barred anarchy lurking in the darker corners of the Internet is the subject of “Untraceable,” a slick thriller that rubbernecker types will find irresistible and repulsive in equal measure.

A creepy young computer genius (Joseph Cross) launches a Web site featuring streaming video of victims ensnared in elaborate death traps that kill them quickly or slowly — depending on how many people log on to watch. The more viewers, the faster (and grislier) the deaths. And the site proves impossible to find and shut down.

Diane Lane, flashing the near-perfect blend of tough and tender that has long been her hallmark, is the FBI cybercrimes expert trying to track the killer, with help from her geeky partner (Colin Hanks, son of Tom) and a brooding police detective (Billy Burke).

The film delivers nauseatingly effective gut punches in pursuit of simultaneously condemning and exploiting its theme — that the viral, anonymous, anything-goes mind-set of the Internet is slowly spreading like an infection and shredding whatever moral fabric we have left.

After all, the film taunts, a lot of us will buy tickets to see this — making us accomplices. And the knowledge that it’s fiction in this particular instance may prove to be a pretty thin salve for the conscience afterward.

In one of the more intense scenes during my screening, the woman next to me whispered to her companion, “Oh, I can’t watch this” — and watched anyway.

That’s exactly the reaction the makers of “Untraceable” are banking on.

Rated R for strong, graphic violence.