Suspect Zero


Starring:  Aaron Eckhart, Carrie-Anne Moss, Ben Kingsley, Harry Lennix

1/4

Rated R for Violent Content, Language, and Some Nudity

“Suspect Zero” has an intriguing premise but has a story that makes no sense.  It’s a wannabe “Donnie Darko” crossed with “Seven” and fails spectacularly.  For about 90% of the running time, it’s a series of images shoved together like in a Michael Bay film, but it can’t camouflage the fact that it has no story.

Disgraced FBI agent Thomas Mackelway (Eckhart) has been reassigned to Albuquerque, New Mexico.  There, he is tasked with finding a serial killer with his ex, Fran Kulok (Moss).  Things get more complicated when the suspect is an ex-FBI agent (Kingsley).

What can I say about this film that has 99 minutes of content but almost nothing coherent to write about?  It’s almost like looking at a slideshow where the images have no relation to each other.  When the movie pauses for dialogue, things start to sort of make sense, but I think they're only included so viewers wanting to see a movie with a plot won't turn the movie off.

I feel sorry for the actors, especially Aaron Eckhart.  The versatile character actor is tasked with carrying a film that no one could possibly salvage.  Not only is the film utterly incoherent, what material Eckhart has is badly written.  The things he has to do are often ridiculous (including, but not limited to, astonishing leaps in logic without any reason).  Carrie-Ann Moss is saddled with the thankless role as Mackelway’s sidekick, but she has almost nothing to do.  Ben Kingsley gives it a game try, but he has very little dialogue.  And Harry Lennix, who was brilliant in Julie Taymor’s “Titus” is wasted.

This is the second feature for director E. Elias Merhige after his arthouse hit “Shadow of the Vampire.”  I haven’t seen that film (it’s in my NetFlix queue), but my anticipation has significantly lessened after seeing this cinematic disaster.  Except for one scene, this film is completely devoid of anything resembling tension or plot coherency.  One has to wonder what Merhige was thinking.

There are many great movies about serial killers out there today.  “Copycat,” “The Silence of the Lambs,” “From Hell,” and the aforementioned “Seven,” just to name a few.  Rent one of those instead of this crapfest.

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