The Bone Collector (2000, DVD)

This is the first in a series of movie reviews by my good friends Key and Grip, a pair of fictional reviewers who write for an equally fictional newsletter, the Pension Ridge Arts Gazette. They also record their reviews for a local radio station. What follows is a transcript of their very first recorded Key and Grip movie review. (NOTE: Every word of this review is my own original work, as will be all future Key and Grip movie reviews.)

Key: Good afternoon and welcome to all our friends and fellow movie lovers! I m Key, and sitting next to me is my cohort in cinematic reviewing, my good friend Grip. This is our first ever recorded movie review, and we hope you ll enjoy it.

Grip: That s right, Key. This review is kind of a special one for me, because it combines three things I like best in a movie: police thrillers, and the actors Denzel Washington, and Angelina Jolie. If you haven t guessed by now, our topic is last year's The Bone Collector.

Key: I know you saw this film last summer, Grip, and had decidedly mixed feelings about it. Since I only saw it for the first time last weekend, I d like to offer my fresh impressions.

The Bone Collector is a "police thriller"...with plenty of cops, but little in the way of "thrills." I thought it dull and predictable, filled with all kinds of clich s of the type you'd find in past, average quality crime thrillers. Certainly nothing of the caliber of, say, The Silence of the Lambs or Se7en! This is a film that pretty much wastes the abilities of some pretty fine actors.

Grip: ...which was pretty much my assessment of the movie last summer. The basic premise of the film certainly has excellent possibilities. A serial killer is loose in New York City. At the scene of every one of his grisly murders, he leaves behind some kind of bizarre clue...and then takes a bone from his victim. The police are baffled by the case, so they turn to Lincoln Rhyme (played by Denzel Washington), a forensic evidence expert - more of a profiler, I guess you could say - to solve the case. Problem is, Rhyme is a quadriplegic, the result of an earlier on-the-job accident.

Key: At one of the murders, the first officer on the scene is a young rookie, Amelia Donaghy, who s played by Angelina Jolie. She quickly finds the killer s strange clues, showing a remarkable level of observance and coolness in a crisis. Because of her seemingly natural abilities to find and analyze forensic evidence, she s enlisted to assist Rhyme in the investigation.

Grip: The rest of the movie pretty much goes from there from a good basic premise to a veritable "la-la land" of cinematic clich s. Let s see, by my reckoning we have...umm...I have it here...yes, a wisecracking former partner of Rhyme s, (played by Ed O Neill), a guy who ll do just about anything for his old friend. (Doesn t every police movie have one of these guys?!) You also have a resentful, hard-nosed police captain (Michael Rooker, an expert at this kind of part) (another ubiquitous feature of every police thriller/ drama/ mystery!) And, of course, the "techie whiz-kid" (played by Luis Guzman) who can do almost everything with anything electronic! Can you believe it...a third omnipresent character in most modern-day police films?!

Key: Here s the biggest problem I have with The Bone Collector: You have all the ingredients of a first-rate, taut, suspenseful thriller a la The Silence of the Lambs... a good basic premise with some originality; a great cast; and a decent screenplay... and yet the whole thing just falls completely flat, with a dull "thud!" The film just seems to plod along from clich to clich . Situations are completely predictable, especially the movie's climax. So do many of the lines delivered by the actors. Yes, there are some harrowing scenes where Jolie s character has to search crime scenes for forensic clues, but in the end, even these scenes seem devoid of that "special ingredient" needed to elevate them to a level of dramatic intensity needed for a truly successful police "thriller."

Grip: I agree with you, Key. Everything did seem kinda flat to me as well...almost as if the cast and crew were trying too hard to make the whole thing work! Well, maybe the screenplay wasn t so good after all...

Key: The acting certainly wasn t up to the level you d expect from "A" list actors! Washington did his usual fine job of delivering his lines, but I thought he was pretty unconvincing as a quadriplegic. I guess I m used to seeing him as that powerful, heroic, athletic figure in Remember the Titans, or Glory; in this film, seeing him lying there in that hospital bed, unable to move anything but his "mouse" finger (a bit of a convenient contrivance if you ask me,) there seemed to lurk under that blanket a powerful presence, not a body wasted by paralysis. I kinda expected that, at the end, he would leap from his bed, and run off to save the day, like the cavalry of old!

Grip: Hmmm... interesting observation, Key. I pretty much have to agree with you there. As for Jolie... well, I thought she was superb with her reserved, controlled performance...

Key: What?! "Reserved, controlled performance?" Are you kidding?! I m afraid I have to differ with you there, my good friend! You wanna see "reserved, controlled performance" at its best? Go watch Bobby Blake in In Cold Blood, or, even better yet, Billy Bob Thornton s portrayal of Karl Childers in Sling Blade! Now those are performances in which the actors forcefully bring the whole gamut of emotions forward on the screen, even when they don t say a word!

No, I thought Jolie s performance was colorless, stiff, and a bit wooden. Certainly nothing "Thorntonesque" about it. In fact, if I hadn t seen her magnificent performance in Girl, Interrupted first, I might have written her off as an actress of mediocre talent at best.

In my opinion, the best performance in the whole movie was Queen Latifah, who played Rhyme s live-in nurse. She was not only completely natural and believable, but she brought probably the most powerful presence to the screen of any actor. Almost stole the show for me, anyway!

Grip: Well, I agree with you about Queen Latifah a first rate performance! Hopefully, we ll see more of her in future films. We ll have to "agree to disagree" on Angelina Jolie, though! (mutters under breath) "colorless, stiff, and a bit wooden " hah!!

Key: Well, Grip, I guess we pretty much see eye to eye on this one with a few exceptions, of course. The Bone Collector could have been a top notch police thriller, having, as it did, a great cast, and a decent premise. But it suffers from a mediocre screenplay, predictable situations, and unconvincing acting from its stars. This is certainly one to rent from the local video store once. But buy it? Nope. If I did that, The Bone Collector would take its place on my video shelf as nothing more than another "Dust Collector."

Grip: Well, that s it for our first movie review, folks! Join us again later (at a time to be determined) for more of Key and Grip s movie reviews. In the meantime, remember... the Key to great movie watching is to always have a Grip!!

See you on the flip side...