Review of Suspect Zero (2004) by Dave I — 14 Jul 2005

Now this was a surprise. Hollywood does make interesting movies and of course it was largely ignored. My video store only had 3 copies (compared to some stupid titles that had more than 12 copies) It's not a big budget movie, but not an indie movie either.

Now the it's another movie where you're thrown characters without knowing their past which of course we will find out are heavy and depression-giving. There's a freaking love interest which has NO PURPOSE to the story and is just there because they needed a love interest.

So we have FBI Agent Thomas Mackelway (played by Aaron Eckhart ) starting his first day at the office in Albuquerque, NM, in other words he was sent there as punishment. The town doesn't even have a Starbucks which irritates our protagonist. Soon enough he's on the track for a serial killer (Or so he thinks), along comes some help from his old office and it happens to be his ex partner Fran Kulok (played by Carrie-Ann Moss). Now this was kinda predictable.

There's also Benjamin O'Ryan played by Ben Kingsley. He is a remote viewer and hunting down serial killers by himself. And what he does with his "victims" is gruesome. But our FBI agents are on his tails because O'Ryan is leaving some serious clues behind him and he has his reasons which I wont reveal.

Now to have a brilliant actor like Sir Ben Kingsley, you should surround him with better actors. Eckhart and Moss are completly out of their league next to him and it shows which makes the movie dip at some points. In a scene with Eckhart and Kingsley (using the mirror) it's where you see Kingsley just blindingly shine.

Production values are above average. The score is so-so. The visual with it's use of contrasts and brightness is very good. There are scenes that are hard to digest but serve the movie well. You realise we are not hunting down armed robbery suspects here. On the DVD there's a lot of nice mini-docs and goodies that are well worth the watch.

4 outta 5.