The film is essentially a cat and mouse homicide drama that pits Red Reddington against Ted ‘Theodore’ Logan. Red is an FBI investigator who is burnt out. He has an untidy apartment and only one orange in his fridge. He used to work L.A. but after his lady friend died in a fire and he failed to catch a serial killer he moved to Chicago to live off disability. That’s not much of a plot so let’s have the serial killer follow him and taunt him with a new set of killings - bodacious!
We get to hear Red’s profile of the killer set against Keanu in action. The idea is that he watches his targets for ages, knowing their every move, before strangling them with piano wire. We know he’s a force to be reckoned with as we’ve already seen him dancing on his own in slow motion.
Red sees a psychiatrist in the shape of a dowdy Marisa Tomei, and neglects to open his post. This turns out to be a mistake as he misses a special offer from Reader’s Digest. No wait, photos from the killer. Bored waiting to get caught, Keanu sends Red photos of his next victim and gives him until 9pm to trace the girl or else she’s history. ‘The Watcher’ has picked out quiet, lonely woman with cats as his victims and the first two peg it before anyone realises who they are. A searing indictment on our selfish society there.
Keanu gets bolder and starts trailing Red before he inevitably kidnaps Marisa and invites his rival to a big warehouse showdown. Who will survive? Will anyone watch ‘The Watcher’ and enjoy it? Doubtful.
This was an awful film that was like a sub-par episode of ‘Criminal Minds’. The police detection was terrible and largely amounted to berating people in the streets and stuffing flyers in their faces. Keanu was no better as the most character free serial killer ever committed to film. You could tell his heart wasn’t in it but that’s no excuse for this lamentable showing.
The director tried to use every trick in the book to jazz things up with flashbacks, POV shots, slow motion and out of focus shots all thrown into a mix that produced a big pile of crap.
There was no tension at all and the big finale was like 50% off day at the CGI shop. I will give the film credit for at least killing the baddie and showing the body - something ambiguous and a ‘The End…?’ caption would probably have ended me.
No one came out of this looking good with even poor old Zedmore off Ghostbusters drafted in to play an ineffective police chief who hands out assignments to any dope head who walks in his door.
There were a few unintentionally funny moments but not enough to rescue this stinker. Overall a complete mess with no thrills or surprises to speak of and some needlessly nasty kills to boot. All in all not worth a watch.
THE Tag Line : ‘Don’t Watch The Watcher’ 44%
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