Overall rating: 3/5
Director: Tarsem Singh
Starring: Jennifer Lopez, Vince Vaughn, Vincent D’Onofrio
Tagline: Flashes of kinky beauty lost in a soulless wasteland of fluff – just like J.Lo!
Film: Why does this movie suck? Is it that the basic plot – underqualified woman in race against time to save a serial killer’s victim by solving a mystery – is so “Silence of the Lambs“? Is it that Vince Vaughan is so miscast as the FBI agent that you can almost hear his cries for help? Maybe it’s that it takes a full hour to get past pointless setup that could’ve been accomplished in 15 minutes?
Yes, but it’s also there are only two things interesting here: One is the mindscape visuals, delights of kinky, colorful set design, and the other is Jennifer Lopez’s transformation from squishy-soft social worker to fetish-doll zombie on a leash to crossbow-wielding leather dominatrix. The former is seen all too rarely compared to all the boring real-world segments (and why is everything in real life so freakin’ blue and gold?), and the latter isn’t seen at all. Nice Jen is captured in the mind of the serial killer. Cut away, come back later, she’s a somnambulist slut. What the hell happened? Later still, she does in the serial killer, now inside her mind, by adopting his leather-kink darkness as her own. Does the filmmaker explore this transformation? No, because he has less connection and sympathy with his human characters than does his amoral serial killer.
Rating: 2/5
DVD: Widescreen; English 5.1 Surround Sound and 2.0 Surround Sound.
Commentaries: Director; Production team. Deleted scenes that add nothing to the film. Several documentaries about the special effects, which are the only thing in this film worth documenting, anyway, and which are pretty interesting, as such things go. But considering that the star of this movie is the visual sequences, the documentaries don’t give enough of a payoff for those fascinated by the mental landscapes.
Easter Eggs: DVD production credits are hidden under the New Line logo at the top of the main menu. Why bother?
3/5
Out of Sight – Jennifer Lopez acting well, in a good movie
Silence of the Lambs – Same plot, no special effects, better in every other way
From Hell – The original serial killer in a rich, stylized film
Moulin Rouge – Stylish, color-saturated fantasy world in a much better film
any fetish porn you can find – If you’re all about the latex costumes
