Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | July 21, 2005 | | Summary | Suspect dumb plot. | Content
 | It's called remote viewing - visualizing through extreme concentration a room or an event of consequence. The CIA apparently used it in the Cold War; the movie "Suspect Zero" pretends the spys taught it to theFBI to catch serial killers. As the movie opens we see the last of the remote viewers, Ben O'Ryan (Ben Kingsley) at the end of his career and mind, locked in a small hotel room, sketching sadism and death, unable to turn the visions off.
O'Ryan wants the attention of another FBI agent, Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart), disgraced to Albuquerque after he blew a big case in Dallas. He gets it through ominous faxes and the dead bodies of previously undiscovered serial killers, the eyes of whom have lost their lids and been sliced through. "He wants us to see," Mackelway says.
Most of "Suspect Zero" is the answer to that question; it involves a map with a lot of pushpins in it, one of those "rooms of an insane man" that cops investigate and a black semi. The story is, as far as plots go, pretty long and convoluted, so drawn out you could argue the movie has no second act - just an endless first followed by a unsatisfactory third.
Kingsley is technically the "star" of the production, and he's swell as the manic, fiercely driven O'Ryan, but his character is clearly drawn as a kind of anti-hero who cause is right even if his methods aren't. Why, then, does director E Elias Merhige give many scenes where Mackelway and his partner (a wasted Carrie-Anne Moss) are uncertain of it? The audiences knows, they don't, and that's a bore. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 15, 2005 | | Summary | I suspect this movie could have used a better editor! | Content
| Others have reviewed the plot. My comment regarding this movie is that too much time was spent on inconsequential scenes, while more could have been devoted to explaining the 'remote viewing'. This feels like one of those movies that was chopped down, leaving one to "catch up" or "make up" to the directors's intent.
With that said, I still enjoyed Kingsley's performance immensely. Unfortunately, Moss was just meant as eye-candy, she does not do much in this film... sigh.
I would describe this as a "housework" movie... good for watching while you are folding t-shirts! |
| Rating | | | Date | July 10, 2005 | | Summary | stalking the serial killers | Content
| The plot is straightforward.
The military trained people to do "remote viewing" to see things in people's minds as they did them miles away.
5 people are trained to look for very criminal behavior, mass murders, child nappers, pedophiles, Ben Kingsley plays the last sane one left.
And he is only marginally functional, chasing a black big truck with the country's greatest mass random murderer driving it.
he gets the FBI agent who is really like him but doesnt know it yet to help, plus to kill him and put him out of his misery.
After a few minutes the great performance by Kingsley doesn't seem to be about Gandhi, it pulls you in well enough with its scientific mumbo jumbo, much better than the X-files genre. It is mildly disorientating by design trying to make you feel what Kingsley's character and the FBI agent see in pieces in their minds.
a minor plot of how does anyone look on evil is there but not really build upon. otherwise it is a ok (B-) creepy detective movie. in the end all the bad guys die and the FBI agent's head aches get worse. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 06, 2005 | | Summary | Far from your typical serial killer film | Content
| A serial killer killing serial killers? I don't know that that's a bad thing - especially since this guy specializes in serial killers the cops haven't even suspected yet. He's got a great little signature, too - a note featuring a zero with a slash through it, and he makes life imitate art by making his victims' eyes look like the one in the picture. Who do you get to play a madman like this? Gandhi, of course. Yes, Ben Kingsley, the man who played Mr. Nonviolent Protest himself, is the guy targeting serial killers here in Suspect Zero - and he plays the role exceedingly well, I might add.
Suspect Zero is, in my opinion, somewhat underrated. To me, it made perfect sense all along. It's a little confusing at first seeing conspicuously red-tinted images flashing buy out of nowhere, but it becomes clear pretty early on that the man being hunted is a remote viewer. Even if you aren't familiar with the concept of remote viewing, it's hard not to figure it out, so I'm not sure why some people seem to come away from this movie feeling totally lost. In a nutshell, remote viewing, which has absolutely been used by American intelligence and the FBI, allows the sensitive viewer to "see" things happening elsewhere, be they missile silos, enemy forces, or serial killers doing what serial killers do. Since Benjamin O'Ryan (Kingsley) can see the crimes, he can find the criminals. That's what he is doing now, taking out unidentified serial killers with just a little bit of vengeance. The big kahuna, though, is still out there - the killer he calls Suspect Zero. Suspect Zero has made a veritable cottage industry of abducting and killing kids in countless numbers all over the country. There's no discernible link between all of the missing kids, so know one even suspects that the world's foremost killer is out there operating with a free hand, nor would anyone believe that one man could claim literally hundreds of victims without getting caught. O'Ryan knows it, though - he has seen it.
The endgame, for whatever reason, involves Special Agent Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart), and O'Ryan is constantly faxing him cryptic clues and missing children's posters in an obvious attempt to draw the agent to him . Mackelway has something of a history, having taken the law into his own hands to some degree and, by so doing, letting a violent killer go free. As he gets deeper and deeper into this case, he begins having cryptic little visions and develops some kind of connection with the man he is searching for (troubling signs for an agent who's already had to go through an extensive psychological evaluation recently). It stands to reason that the whole gang will assemble at the very end -O'Ryan, Mackelway, and, of course, Suspect Zero himself - and that Mackelway will have to get there without much help from his disbelieving colleagues.
By and large, I think Suspect Zero is an excellent film. It's a thriller with a twist, an unusual story that plays out quite well. Unfortunately, it seems to take a shortcut or two on its way to a conclusion, leaving too much in the hands of fate or coincidence. It also has to go and give us two partners with a romantic history teaming up again - apparently, it's illegal to make a crime thriller without some kind of romantic subplot. Eckhart isn't bad, but he isn't completely convincing as he takes his character to the brink between insight and insanity. Besides his partner Fran (Carrie-Anne Moss), the rest of the characters barely emerge from the woodwork, especially Mackelways' supervisor (who doesn't even yell when he's upset with his rogue agent).
Despite a few minor faults, though, the unusual storyline of Suspect Zero and the excellent performance by Ben Kingsley carry the day, making this film stand out quite noticeably from others in the genre. Dark, gritty, and compelling, it's a film well worth watching, especially for those who harbor a fascination with serial killers. |
| Rating | | | Date | June 29, 2005 | | Summary | Boring ... | Content
| A stalwart actor like Ben Kingsley is truly wasted in this movie.
Sir Ben Kingsley plays the role of a Benjamin O'Ryan, a clairvoyant undercover out-of-service FBI agent who is following a serial killer across the country. En route, Benjamin uncovers other serial killers using clairvoyance and murders them. Sursprisingly, Benjamin leaves a signature (a zero with a stroke) after every murder. This trait confuses the in-service FBI agents Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) & his partner (Carrie-Anne Moss) to believe that Benjamin is the actual killer on the prowl. The story meanders along slowly and Mackelway eventually (after getting lots of confusing hints from Benjamin) figures out Benjamin is actually leading them to the killer. Visuals of Benjamin getting clairvoyance are dark and disturbing. The graphic images just add to the darkness.
All in all a boring fare that will give you a bad taste.
I think actors like Ben Kingsley and Carrie-Anne Moss have been wasted in this movie. |
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