Pretensions suffered numerous AV problems on the flight back to Singapore, which resulted in her watching the beginning of Untraceable at least three times. Unfortunately, it didn't really improve the movie.

Untraceable features the usual feisty attractive female FBI agent (Diane Lane) with her trusty male sidekicks (Billy Burke & Colin Hanks) up against the inevitably insane serial killer. The kicker in this movie is that this serial killer streams the torture and murder of his victims live on the internet, with the time taken for the victim to die in inverse proportion to the number of people logging in to view it. P was hoping for a witty commentary on the "Bare-all, tell-all and stream it live on Youtube" culture on the Internet, and indeed the movie brings up some serious questions. The comments on the killer's site (killwithme.com) reveal a total lack of social responsibility and a drooling voyeurism which is very very disturbing. As bloggers, we should ask ourselves if the internet really has desensitised us to violence and porn? Do we really think of another human being only in terms of the spectacle he/she can provide?

So, Untraceable could have been the Silence of the Lambs for the internet generation but instead, degenerates into another sick torturefest along the lines of Hostel or Saw. What happened? Firstly, the torture of each victim is lingered on lovingly despite being more or less irrelevant to the plot. I mean, is it really necessary to watch human skin bubble and sear like a chicken on a BBQ? Perhaps the director was trying to make a point, or make us accomplices to the killer, in the same way that those who logged in to the killwithme.com site were accomplices, but I felt it could have been handled a lot more subtly (Give us Hitchcock rather than Uwe Boll!). Second, the identity of the killer was revealed far too early, taking away any sense of mystery the viewer might have felt. Third, the plot is creaky to say the least. How come a top FBI cybercrime expert can climb back into a car that's had its computer hacked into by the film's villain? And what kind of paragon could possibly manage to blink in morse code while being lowered into a vat of acid?

Watch this at your own risk, unless torture is your thing.