Serial killers have been popular subjects for Hollywood thrillers in recent years. Studio executives always hope they can produce intense and stylish thrillers like The Silence of the Lambs or Seven, but the results usually seem tired and stale, like 1997’s Kiss The Girls, or for that matter, the subject of this review: The Watcher.
Keanu “Dude” Reeves plays the role of serial killer David Allen Griffin (not to be confused with In Living Color star David Alan Grier). Griffin has followed his nemesis, FBI agent Joel Campbell (played by James Spader), from Los Angeles to Chicago where he continues his murderous ways and deadly games. The audiences suspension of disbelief is stretched to the right from the start of the film, as we are asked to believe that Keanu Reeves can pull off the role of a calculating, brilliant murderer.
The film’s flimsy plot relies on the cat-and-mouse games that Griffin and Campbell play, and the failed attempts of screenwriters Darcy Meyers and David Elliot to create witty and intense dialogue. Each day, Griffin sends Campbell a photograph of his next target. Campbell must track down the victim before she meets her death at 9 o’clock at night. The few fleeting moments of suspense in the movie come as Campbell desperately seeks to find the identity of the targets.
Marissa Tomei plays the pointless and boring role of Polly, Campbell’s psychiatrist. While featuring a psychiatrist in a movie can sometimes be an effective way to learn more about the background of a main character, Polly’s interaction with Campbell consists of little more than banal chitchat. Tomei’s character has no purpose in the film until the final standoff, when she becomes little more than a convenient-for-the-plot setpiece. The computer generated final explosion scene is perhaps the movie’s worst.
Hints of romantic interest exist between Campbell and Polly, but these hints fall flat because there is a complete lack of onscreen chemistry between Tomei and Spader. In fact, there is more sexual tension between Reeve’s and Spader’s characters than between Tomei and Spader. If this were explored more thoroughly in the film, it could have made for an interesting subplot. Both Campbell and Griffin have the potential to be interesting characters because of their interconnected and complicated past experiences, but both come off as flat and boring.
Another huge problem with this film is its over-edited style. Director Joe Charbanic, in his feature-film debut, went overboard with too many quick-cuts, handheld shots, slow motion scenes, distorted shots and flashbacks. MTV-style, in-your-face editing may be effective in some movies, but it certainly seems like a distraction here. A more traditional approach to shooting the action may have helped the pace of this film.
Other setbacks to this movie include errors in logic and fact. While I do not claim to know much about science, I know that when a lighter is tossed onto a car covered in gasoline with the engine running, that car will likely explode and the driver will certainly not be able to drive away unscathed.
There is also a scene in which Campbell willingly gives his gun to Griffin. I do not claim to be an expert in criminology, either, but handing your only gun to a known psychopathic murderer can never be considered a good idea.
Reeves, Tomei and Spader are all decent actors, but because of the poor script, as well as questionable editing and a standard cop-versus-killer plotline, The Watcher ends up being a movie in which the characters seem like they are simply going through the motions only to wait for a grand finale that is a prefabricated disappointment. D-