Untraceable

Untraceable, which had been expected to take in less than $10 million, turned out to be a pleasant surprise for Sony. So, too, possibly were the handful of solid reviews the film garnered from several critics on Friday. (Most despised it.) Chicago Sun-Times critic Roger Ebert (who wrote his review of the movie before entering the hospital last week for surgery to correct damage that had resulted from previous operations last year) described it as "a horrifying thriller, smart and tightly told, and merciless." Ann Horniday credited Diane Lane's performance for pulling it all off: "An otherwise slick, well-crafted police procedural, Untraceable dabbles in the kind of torture porn that has made movies like Saw and Hostel such hit franchises with the very teenagers Lane's career has so triumphantly defied." On the other hand, Joe Morgenstern wrote in the Wall Street Journal:"This joyless thriller runs the gamut from unconscionable through unwatchable to unendurable." Then there was Stephen Holden's curious review in the New York Times, which said, "You may view Untraceable, as I do, as a repugnant example of the voyeurism it pretends to condemn. Or you may stand back and see it as a cleverly conceived, slickly executed genre movie that ranks somewhere between Seven and the Saw movies in sadistic ingenuity."