Film is Pwn

As far as titles go, “The Bone Collector” sounds like it ought to be the tale of a forlorn archaeologist, unable to connect on a personal level with any living person until he meets the girl of his dream who brings him out of his shell and he finds love and discovers there’s more to life than hunting for bones in the desert.  *Sigh*  However, in this case, “The Bone Collector” turns out to be a cookie-cutter, garden-variety, thriller-novel-turned-thrill-free-movie that tries to be Silence of the Lambs but to actually watch soundless lambs is approximately twice as entertaining.

Taking away that rather cryptic summary and just examining the ingredients, there’s a lot going for The Bone Collector to be a good movie.  Of course, filet mignon, chocolate, french toast, and grapes are great, but not necessarily together if you catch my drift.

The Bone Collector has a good director in Phillip Noyce, the man behind the best of the Jack Ryan films and one of the better political thrillers, Clear and Present Danger.  The stars are no less than two of the best actors working, Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie (before she was an A-lister).  And it’s based on a novel – and all novels are inherently good, right?  Still, at best the movie feels like you are witnessing spare parts of better movies and at worst like they were kind of making the story up as they went.  I believe the great Michael J. Nelson once referred to a movie made from leftovers of better flicks as a “movieloaf” – and the Bone Collector is the perfect embodiment of a movieloaf.

If you hadn’t guessed, the movie stinks like fried ox excrement on a stick.  Why?  I’m glad you asked.  Let’s find out together, shallst we?  And by “we” I mean “me,” of course, you don’t have to watch the bad movie, unless you already did, and if so, why didn’t you warn me to avoid it?  But let’s not dwell on the past wrongs you have done to me, I’m a big enough man to look past it and still write about this movieloaf.

The plot features Denzel Washington as a brilliant, New York homicide detective named – and I promise you I’m not joking – Lincoln Rhymes.  Before watching the Bone Collector, if you had asked me who “Lincoln Rhymes” was, I would probably guess an Illinois rapper wearing a stovepipe hat.  Feel free to use that name, if you happen to be an up-and-comer in the Illinois hip hop scene.  If you don’t like that one, try DJ Emancipator.

Anyhoo, Lincoln is paralyzed in the opening scene in a shocking accident at a crime scene.  I say “shocking” because if you aren’t safe at a crime scene located in the sewers of New York City, where are you safe?  As Lincoln is a bed-ridden paraplegic with a sassy nurse played by Queen Latifah, he is trying to convince the authorities to let him die before he degenerates in a vegetable.  Well, the whole impending vegetabledom is the excuse Lincoln espouses, but I think he wants life to be over because he has to spend all day with Queen Latifah without the ability to get up and walk out.  (I kid Her Majesty, of course.)

Meanwhile, a gaudy serial killer (is there any other kind in movies?) is terrorizing New York with the audacity to kill rich, influential people but the courtesy to leave carefully chosen clues at the dumping ground of his victims.  Sadly, the police do not have Batman’s patented “Bat-Riddle-Solving” machine at their disposal to handle the situation, but someone out there really needs to get off their duff and invent that thing.

At the first crime scene, rookie cop Amelia (Jolie) is the one who arrives at the staged crime scene and manages to prevent a train from disrupting the evidence.  MC Rail Spitter — I mean, Lincoln Rhymes — is brought in as a consultant on the case despite his frequent seizures and profound death wish that would make Dr. Kevorkian proud, and is thoroughly impressed with how Amelia preserved the crime scene and just knows that she’ll make a great forensic detective even if it’s against her well.  This leads to a scene where Amelia is brought to visit Lincoln, and Lincoln railroads Amelia against her will to be on the case, telling her:  “Pull up a chair.  I want you to tell me everything you know about the crime scene. . .   I want to know what you felt.  What you feel in the deepest recesses of your senses.”  Denzel is an amazing actor, but even he can’t make dialogue like that work.

Pretty soon Lincoln’s luxury apartment is turned into a satellite police headquarters, with Amelia the rookie cop who has no business being there and no motivation to be there running point on the most critical investigation in the city.  A paralyzed detective inches from death (and trying to crawl toward said death) and a rookie beat cop irritated that her transfer to a different assignment has been delayed due to the case might play a pivotal role in Salt Lick, Kentucky, but not New York City.  Even at its best moments, the student/teacher rapport between Amelia and Lincoln, which really comes off as gimmicky and contrived.

The other selling point for the film is the mysterious, cab-driving serial killer stalking the streets from the shadows, taunting the police with clues only a single notch more low-key than the Riddler.  If that’s not enough, when the killer is revealed to be an already introduced character who I had to struggle to remember who the heck he (or she) was and how he (or she) had figured into the movie before that very moment.  The killer gets to explain his (or her!) motivations, including great bon mots such as: “I gave you so many clues and you failed!”  It’s perhaps one of the most utterly unsatisfying conclusions to a big-budget mystery/thriller I’ve ever seen, and I have seen Perfect Stranger.  They would have been far better off making the killer totally unrelated to the other characters, something like the aforementioned Silence of the Lambs, and everyone would feel less cheated.

But cheated we are by the Bone Collector, for by its very presence it mocks good movie making and — dare I say it? — entertainment itself.  Skip it!

–Daniel J. Roos thinks the coolest thing about the Bone Collector is that Optimus Prime does the voice-over for the trailer: