Hey look! It's another serial killer movie, a genre so over-exploited in the past 5-10 years that there is basically no new ground to walk on when it comes to plot. Well writer Zak Penn did his best to find just a small piece of new ground to trample with the release of Suspect Zero. The story follows agent Tom Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) coming off of a six month suspension for forcibly extraditing a serial killer from Mexico to the US. Now relocated at the FBI offices in Albuquerque he starts receiving unexplained faxes of missing person reports from an unidentified person. Soon he finds out the faxes are from a killer responsible for the deaths of two people and the faxes are simple clues to help him solve the case. Without going too much further into the details, you find out that the killer (Ben Kingsley) has the ability of "remote viewing" which is the ability to see far away using only his mind in vivid detail. The rest of the movie is full of the typical plot twists and turns associated with today's serial killer movies.
First I want to discuss the acting a bit because Ben Kingsley is perfect in this movie. His ability to portray a tired and tortured soul is incredible. His performance is the highlight of the movie. Aaron Eckhart and Carrie-Anne Moss who play the two main FBI agents gave decent performances, nothing ground breaking, but ultimately were let down by a less than solid script. By the time your done watching the movie if you really think about things and analyze it, there are a lot of holes and things that just don't make a whole lot of sense. Maybe it's my own fault for analyzing everything to death, but it's the FBI! I think if there were holes, they would find them.
Director E. Elias Merhige did a respectable job with the camera work and overall movie, especially the remote viewing camera work. It wasn't innovative, but it still gave a nice touch and feel to those parts within the movie. The audio work was also pretty good, it added to a chilling feel for parts of the movie, although nothing in the movie was particularly scary in my opinion.
People compared Suspect Zero to the likes of Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, but honestly it falls well short of those two. The concept of remote viewing was definitely interesting and Ben Kingsley's performance was noteworthy, but ultimately the inadequacy of the script and lack of more originality makes Suspect Zero rent-able at best.
"Suspect Zero" opens August 27, 2004 and is rated R. Thriller. Directed by E Elias Merhige. Written by Zak Penn. Starring Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Carrie Anne Moss.
