Mindhunters (6/10)

by Tony Medley

“A Star is Born” has been remade several times and each has been pretty good. But, I wonder, how many times are they going to try to remake Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians?” Each time it seems to get worse. And this time is no exception.

Don’t get me wrong, this has tension. Set on an isolated island off the coast of North Carolina, it’s kind of scary. Seven FBI profilers are sent to the island for training along with a policeman, Gabe Jensen (rapper LL Cool J), by their FBI boss, Jake Harris (Val Kilmer). There they are, alone on this island, with no way to communicate, when they start dying one by one. Where it gets ridiculous are the ways in which they are dispatched, each of which requires, not only split second timing, but that each victim be in a specific location in order to be sent along.

Worse, these people are all undisciplined idiots. To even speculate that they could have gone this far in training with the FBI is beyond fantasy. Rather than hoping one would survive, I was picking out the most obnoxious and hoping that would be the next victim. And, believe me, it was a difficult choice because they are all jerks.

Further marring the film is the extreme “CSI” type cinematography. I can’t watch CSI because the extreme close-ups turn me off. That’s what you get in “Mindhunters,” one extreme close-up after another. What, a 10 foot high face isn’t enough? We have to look at one that fills the entire screen? It’s bad enough on TV. In a theater it’s really irksome.

It held my interest, but I looked at my watch a lot.

May 3, 2005