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80Merhige understands how exciting going to the edge of credibility can be without falling off, and he has the bravura talent and imagination needed to pull off the sheer, hurtling audacity of Suspect Zero.
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70With its spooky atmosphere to spare and a riveting central performance by Kingsley, an actor who manages to elicit both terror and sympathy, I was able to forget all those things, basking in the pleasure of my own goose bumps. So, for an hour and a half, will you.
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63The script isn't really good enough to worry about whether it's being over-directed; in fact, E. Elias Merhige's over-direction is one of the best things about this movie--along with Ben Kingsley's grimly unstoppable killer-of-killers, Benjamin O'Ryan.
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63The trouble is that the plot is so elliptical to be almost unfollowable (though it helps to have seen the trailer).
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60Suspect Zero has enough going for it to eventually develop a cult following. But compared to "Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven," it's still the minor leagues.
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Directed by E. Elias Merhige, the film is never less than entertaining, but Sir Ben's portrayal of a sympathetic psychopath gives it a special zing.
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50There's a point at which its enigmatic flashes of incomprehensible action grow annoying, and a point at which we realize that there's no use paying close attention, because we won't be able to figure out the film's secrets until they're explained to us.
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50Ultimately the story of someone who preys on other serial killers, but can't seem to come up with an original way in which to do it.
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50Fails to provide one essential ingredient: suspense.
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50It's merely adequate, with one riveting element but limited chills.
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50Eckhart, who gets more rugged by the picture, certainly works hard to bring the audience along. But he's a nervous wreck for nothing. This movie isn't talking to us, it's talking to other serial killer movies.
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50Kingsley gets the film's one big emotional scene and makes it count.
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50The truth is, the freakiness kinda turns the director on, and he nearly strangles Suspect Zero with love.
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50Merhige is too talented to be dismissed as a wannabe, but here his gifts for clever angles and oogy feelings are tethered to blasé genre redundancies and clunky storytelling. Looks great, less thrilling. I blame the screenwriters.
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50A novel twist in the second half succeeds in distinguishing this from the pack but also wrenches it away from the meager characters.
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42When, in its eventful final act, Merhige finally reveals what this thing is REALLY all about, it comes not with any blissful storytelling satisfaction but a grinding sense that this strange movie is a structural mess.
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40Given nothing to do, Carrie-Anne Moss looks on from the sidelines as the film halfheartedly toys with the tired old notion that only a thin line separates the dogged investigator and the compulsive killer. She looks bored, and she should.
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40A plodding and familiar "cop sees what the killer sees" riff that plays like a poorly inflated "The X-Files" episode.
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38The clichéd and predictable Suspect Zero is the latest evidence that Hollywood has run the serial-killer thriller into the ground through overuse - the same way it earlier exhausted, say, buddy action-comedies.
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38The movie's premise is as dopey as they come: A serial killer with a conscience is killing other serial killers.
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30It's not easy to make a thriller that's both incredibly convoluted and intensely boring, but director E. Elias Merhige scores on both counts with this lame excuse for a spooky crime story.
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30The movie contains not one surprise, not one shock, not one scare, not one bit of interest for any moviegoer over the age of ten (mentally or physically).
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30Suspect Zero is loaded with cheap thrills for the expensively educated.
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30None of the principals is remotely likable--although Kingsley does appear to enjoy swanning around the great Southwest like a low-rent Anthony Hopkins.
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25Preposterous, physically hideous paranormal thriller.
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Among the lamest serial-killer movies ever made.
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20Instead of building suspense and tension, Suspect Zero devotes its efforts to creating a weird and creepy milieu that will leave fans of police procedurals wanting and avant-garde enthusiasts scratching their heads.
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20Finally, a serial-killer movie so preposterous, so garnished with accidental laugh lines and absent essential narrative logic it may actually put a permanent kibosh on this tediously overworked crime subgenre. Here's hoping, at any rate.
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20A grisly, depraved and wholly uninvolving exercise in empty mannerism.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 7 out of 13
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Mixed: 1 out of 13
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Negative: 5 out of 13