The Bone Collector

Word on the street was that Hollywood's most infamous Chianti-sipping, organ-eating baddie was nervous. After all, with The Bone Collector (just the title gives you the willies, doesn't it?) due for release, his reign as serial killer extraordinaire could have been compromised. Well, I hope that Hannibal Lechter reads this review because I'm here to say that he has nothing to fear. The Bone Collector is one of the most insultingly formulaic pieces of drivel to come down the pike in a long time.

This is the sort of film that studios have high hopes for. Based on a best-selling book, it's packaged out the wazoo with a major celebrity (Denzel Washington), a sexy rising star (Angelina Jolie) and an A-List director (Philip Noyce). Oh, and did I forget to mention that it's about a serial killer? (We Americans do love our sickos, after all.) So what went wrong? Just about everything. From the start, there's a major hint that things may move slowly -- real slowly -- here.

After all, Denzel as former forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme, is paralyzed from the chest down and lives with the possibility that, if a seizure hits, he could become a vegetable at any time. Confined to a bed for the entire film, he uses his mouth and finger to operate the complex web of computers that keep him company and are seemingly meant to keep us enthralled. (They don't.) Now, maybe someone missed the boat on this one, but I recall that rule number one in screenwriting is: Keep your hero active. In a book, this might work; on screen, it will kill you. Writer Jeremy Iacone seems to think that showing Lincoln's pained expressions and having him think deep thoughts about things -- like how he plans his final transition (i.e., suicide) -- will suffice. It doesn't, and we quickly get bored.

To remedy this problem, Angelina Jolie is introduced as Amelia Donaghy, the reluctant beat cop who has just discovered a dead body and a mystifying crime scene. Amelia's presence in the film simply strains credulity, but does -- in typical Hollywood fashion --open up the potential for an absurd throw-away romance between her and Linc in the third act. Basically, she's here to be Linc's eyes and ears; he's seen a talent in her handling of the crime scene and he needs her. Now, Amelia Donaghy is no Clarisse Starling. Her dark secret -- that her cop dad committed suicide and she's afraid the job might push her to do the same -- is flimsy at best and her inability to handle the job just makes her seem weak. Later, of course, she finds the courage to face up to the horrors and, I guess, we're supposed to cheer her gumption. Woop-eee!

If you haven't guessed by now, the real problem here is that everything is by-the-numbers, and ridiculous numbers at that. As the story unfolds, we learn that a serial killer is kidnapping victims and killing them in various bizarre manners, having first surgically removed a bone from each of their bodies. Linc and Amelia struggle to piece together the meticulously crafted clues that point to each new victim, but they're too late every time. Slowly, they start to realize that the killer is playing a game of cat-and-mouse (how original!) with them. Does anyone else find it odd that, in the movies, serial killers are always obsessed with leaving the cops clues?

Now, I'm going to give a little something away here because this is the big point of contention for me. Toward the end of the film, Amelia and Linc decipher a clue that leads them to an old book called -- you guessed it -- The Bone Collector. It seems that the killer has been patternin