Almost retired Detective Ray Archer comes to the aid of Detective Will Ruiney in order to catch a serial killer who seems to be playing a deadly game of hangman, leaving a letter on each victim.
Along with the pair trying to crack the case they have Christi Davies a crime journalist sticking with them to report on everything that has been happening. The trio working together in an attempt to put the pieces or work out the word the killer is spelling. Each victim has a different letter and those are left filled in on the wall near the body. No pattern seems to emerge in terms of the way they are killed.
The film is well pretty poor from start to finish which is a shame really considering Al Pacino is on of the leads. Although it does raise the question to why and how he has become typecast as an old detective in the majority of his films from the last 5-10 years? But at the same time I cannot help but watch them. Made me think of Righteous Kill and 88 Minutes. Maybe we can pretend they are all part of a bad trilogy?
Anyway nothing about the twists in this film we're overly shocking as the viewer it didn't make you care anywhere near enough. You have to care when seeing a story unfold before you or it just doesn't really matter how it ends.
I will admit though that I had not heard of this until seeing it on Netflix. With Pacino and then Karl Urban (I have a strange thing still about the Lord of the Rings cast members and watch anything they are in) I decided it could be decent. I did not research anything about it before hand. If I did I would have seen a 5% Rotten Tomatoes rating as well as tags about bad acting on Google search. Not that those things put me off a film, I would watch anyway to find out if it was really that bad.
This film did try to be a bit different but with so many serial killers with clever story lines and twists it was too far off the mark. Thinking bout how Se7en did everything so well this was on a very low level. I wasn't overly impressed with Brittany Snow trying to make the transition to a more serious role and film genre either. She wasn't really given much though I guess in terms of her one dimensional character. Just added in to have a female character?
I am therefore not going to recommend this one. However, if you have seen it did you find it as bad as everyone else?
