Director Gregory Hoblit's (the man who previously helmed Fallen and Hart's War) latest thriller finds Diane Lane playing a Portland, Oregon based F.B.I. agent named Jennifer Marsh. When she's not busting computer savvy perverts and credit card fraudsters at the cyber crimes division of the bureau, she's trying to be a good mother to her young daughter, Annie (Perla Haney-Jardine of Kill Billand Spider-Man 3).

When Portland's finest turn over a website called killwithme.com, Jennifer and her partner, Agent Griffin Dowd (Colin Hanks) logon to see a poor little kitten put to death. This is bad enough on its own but the next time they logon, they see a recently kidnapped man being tortured and finally killed live over streaming video. A local cop, Detective Eric Box (Billy Burke), joins the investigation and soon the three are caught in a race against time to find and stop the killer before be strikes again. It isn't going to be easy, however, as he's constantly changing servers and always seems to be one step ahead of them. The agents know that the killer is operating locally, but what they don't know is why he's killing and why he's choosing these very specific victims as his prey.

Untraceable is a well paced thriller with a couple of surprisingly nasty murder scenes and a solid lead performance from Diane Lane. She's well cast as a smart and capable heroine, and she's quite capable in the part. While the film borrows a bit from what's come before (Se7en, Saw, Argento's The Card Player and even Dee Snider's Strangeland) it at least does so well and proves to be a reasonably suspenseful picture with a couple of legitimately intense moments. The film is also fairly smart with its use of computer technology, keepings things fairly close to within the realm of possibility.

The Portland locations make for an appropriately gloomy backdrop for the film to take place in and the photography does a nice job of capturing not only the scenery of the Pacific Northwest region but also the colder side - the rain, the decay, the perpetually grey skies that are so common during the fall and winter months in the area. The film also contrasts the older suburban areas that surround the inner part of the city with the high-tech atmosphere and equipment that the killer uses to do his dirty deeds. The picture is slick looking, it's well shot and makes good use of sound.

Unfortunately, the familiarity of the storyline cannot be denied and because of this at times it doesn't quite fire on all cylinders. Still, Untraceable gets enough right that it's worth a watch, even if it should have maybe not borrowed so heavily from other films.

Video:

Untraceable's 1080p/AVC MPEG 4 encoded 2.40.1 anamorphic widescreen transfer is good, but not without a few quirks. Ultra observant viewers may notice the odd speck here and there but for the most part the image is clean and stable from start to finish. Contrast varies from scene to scene, however, with some moments looking dead on and others looking a little bit washed out. Detail is strong in the foreground and the background but color reproduction is just a little on the flat side. This is a fairly dark film to begin with but the overwhelmingly dominant colors in the film's palette seem to make things look a little muddier than they probably should have. There aren't any problems with mpeg compression artifacts or edge enhancement nor is there is much in the way of aliasing to complain about. Overall, the movie looks very good, just not perfect.