The important connection between the detective and
his quarry, a staple of the mystery story since Poe, undergoes a peculiar
metamorphosis in our time. Based on the evidence of both history and headlines,
the serial killer is the culprit of choice these days, supplanting such quaint
figures of the past as the safecracker, the jewel thief, and the criminal
mastermind.
Not only does he provide an enormous quantity of
material for journalists, novelists, and filmmakers, but the serial killer also
encourages all those FBI profilers and forensic experts to talk endlessly on
television shows, invariably identifying some elusive murderer by age,
religion, employment, sex life, hobbies, and so forth, and always getting it
entirely wrong. The D.C. sniper, some may recall, was supposed to be an angry,
middle-aged white man with a God complex: go figure.
Thomas Harris’s trilogy of novels dealing with
Hannibal Lecter and their spectacular success in film adaptations probably
energized the cinematic character of both killer and detective more than any
single entity since Jack the Ripper stalked the dirty, dismal streets of
Victorian London and the English cops, as cops will, entirely bungled the
investigation. The latest cinematic combination of serial killer and FBI agent,
Suspect Zero, borrows from both the
Lecter trilogy and, especially in its visual techniques, from the less
well-known serial killer flick Seven.
Aaron Eckhart plays Thomas Mackelway, an FBI agent
demoted from Dallas to Albuquerque for violating the law in pursuit of a
killer, which allowed his quarry to go free. He receives cryptic communications
from someone who appears to know him and his history, listing a score of
missing children, presumably the victims of “Suspect Zero,” a serial killer who
follows no particular pattern and obeys no particular modus operandi. While he
and his generally obtuse colleagues blunder about, hunting Suspect Zero, they
find a series of mutilated adult corpses, marked with a peculiar symbol, who
may or may not be the victims of the murderer they seek.
The investigation ultimately uncovers the existence
of a former FBI agent, Benjamin O’Ryan (Ben Kingsley), on a personal crusade to
track down and punish the murderers, a serial killer who kills serial killers.
An alumnus of a government program that employed psychics to find criminals,
O’Ryan possesses a variety of powers connected to his extreme mental and
emotional sensitivity — telepathy, clairvoyance, and a kind of imaginative
empathy — which enable him to envision horrible crimes and identify the
killers. He also perceives that Agent Mackelway shares some of his abilities,
which links the two men not only as questers for the same hidden truth, but
also as partners in the guilty bond that historically connects detectives and
criminals.
The director shows the complicated connection
between the two men through an endless assortment of visual stratagems —
rapid cuts, varying film speeds, extreme closeups of unbalanced compositions,
flashbacks in grainy black and white, shared hallucinations shot through red
filters, oblique camera angles, etc. The dazzling camera work, along with a
musical score so insistent that it sometimes overwhelms the dialogue, imparts a
palpable intensity to the action and characters, maintaining a tremendous pace
and constantly ratcheting up the level of emotion. The technical virtuosity
also reflects the precarious mental state of both Agent Mackelway and Benjamin
O’Ryan, two men linked as much by their mutual demons as by their shared quest.
Although the film roams across the vast desert
spaces of the Southwest, traversing the sere, vacant landscapes with the
hunters and their various quarries, it really focuses inward, concentrating on
a small cast of characters and on the increasingly deranged and desperate
mental condition of its two major characters. Except for the relatively
marginal presence of Carrie-Anne Moss as a fellow agent and former lover who
knows Mackelway’s history, the director locates his real scope and action in
the frightening interior of a deteriorating psyche.
The script shows a rather different FBI agent from
the usual movie investigator, a troubled, insecure, neurotic, hypersensitive
man poised on the brink of a breakdown. Aaron Eckhart occasionally soars over
the top in his depiction of Agent Mackelway’s mental anguish, gobbling aspirins
like gumdrops, straining and grimacing like a weightlifter, but generally
handles the part with skill and conviction.
Ben Kingsley, however, dominates the picture,
providing a center for its powerful emotion, lending a sense of pathos to a
character who also seems at times almost as scary and vicious as the crook he
played in Sexy Beast. His performance
neatly encapsulates the success of Suspect
Zero, an exciting and intense combination of style and content, and a very
different take on the serial killer, that characteristic figure of our time.
Suspect Zero (R), starring Aaron Eckhart, Ben Kingsley, Carrie-Anne Moss; directed
by E. Elias Merhige. Cinemark Tinseltown, Loews Webster, Pittsford Plaza
Cinema, Regal Culver Ridge, Regal Eastview, Regal Henrietta.
This article appears in Sep 1-7, 2004.
