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Suspect Zero - 8/27/04 - R - 99m
Ben Kingsley - Benjamin O'Ryan
Aaron Eckhart - Thomas Mackelway
Carrie-Anne Moss - Fran Kulok
Director: E. Elias Merhige
Written by: Zak Penn
Studio: Intermedia (paramount)
Official
Website
JEF
It’s difficult to really say that I “enjoyed” this movie, because the film was a little disturbing. It very much reminded me of “Se7en” with Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman. In spite of the graphic violence and some disturbing scenes I was drawn into this movie and enjoyed it in the sense of it being a psychological thriller.
Storyline: We meet Thomas Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) an FBI agent who has recently been relocated from the Dallas office. Agent Mackelway is called in on a murder investigation and things start to get a little weird. Somehow his former partner Fran Kulok (Carrie-Anne Moss) is also called in to help investigate the murder and suspected serial killer aspect. We are then introduced to the other main character of Benjamin O’Ryan (Ben Kingsley) who is apparently running around the country as a serial killer himself killing other serial killers via his “talent” as a “remote viewer”.
I don’t think I’ve given away too much here as most all of this becomes apparent from the trailer.
First I’ll start with the bad, as it’s sort of the only bad thing I have to say about the film. Aaron Eckhart was horrible at playing the lead character of Thomas Mackelway. It was almost painful to watch one scene in particular where he travels to his partner’s apartment in an attempt to have her comfort him. Lyn mentioned this as one of the items that caused his negative review of the film, and I totally agree with Lyn. But for some reason, I was able to look past this.
It’s hard to explain but I really got drawn into this film. I was enjoying all the visual tricks and sound tricks to get my mind into the psychological aspects of the movie. For example in the beginning of the film, there was one scene in particular that was shot upside down… I think this is a film 101 tricks, but I really liked it. The next thing that got me was the sound effects, for example one scene you hear an eerie whistling noise, and later in the movie this whistling is repeated. If you weren’t paying attention you could have easily overlook this detail. But I caught it, and it kinda freaked me out 
. The visual aspect of the movie really sucked me in too. As strange as it sounds I enjoyed the artwork of the images. Coming from a love of horror comic books, I liked the gothic style images.
Finally, the topic of remote viewing really cinched it for me. I’ve heard of remote viewing of course as any fan of the X-files has I’m sure. I find it incredibly difficult to believe in “remote viewing” but that’s where the movie helped me to suspend my reality and for about 2 hours and thought “what if”. I also find it incredibly odd that this movie was based a little on true aspects. Yes, the government really did have a remote viewing experiment. The movie referred to it as “project Icharus” but in fact it was called “Project Stargate.” I was able to dig up some interesting “facts” about this phenomenon and was surprised to see that the government experiments went on for 24 years, before finally being shut down. (Although many Internet conspiracy websites think they never really shut the projects down.)
I will look forward to renting this movie again at some point, and trying to look at the film for even more details that I may have missed. I think there was an underlying theme of good versus evil, and subjects like God and the Devil that were only briefly touched upon - that perhaps there was more to this. The movie made me think about good vs. evil, and whether or not revenge can be “justified”.
I only wish that maybe Ben Kingsley who I really like, might have played the roll of Thomas Mackelway. I think he did a good job playing the part of Benjamin, but for the sake of the movie I think Aaron should have been recast. (Sorry Aaron).
Jef
Here’s what Lyn thought…
