Review: Along Came a Spider

Detective and Forensic Psychologist Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) is back when a creepy criminal portraying himself as a genial teacher named Mr. Soneji (Michael Wincott) kidnaps one of his students (Mika Boorem). Said student happens to be the daughter of a U.S. Senator, I might add. Aiding Cross this time is the girl’s Secret Service bodyguard Jezzie Flannigan (Monica Potter) as they try to track down Soneji and rescue the little girl. Dylan Baker plays another law enforcement guy, Penelope Ann Miller plays the girl’s mother, and Jay O. Sanders reprises his FBI man role from “Kiss the Girls”.

Only a slight improvement over its predecessor “Kiss the Girls” (though apparently in terms of the books, this one’s a prequel), this 2001 Lee Tamahori (“Once Were Warriors”) killer-thriller suffers from pretty much the same problems as the earlier James Patterson adaptation. There’s still a few things to like, but not quite enough to put it over the line I’m afraid.

Things don’t start well, with an opener where absolutely nothing convinces, especially the FX work. As the central kidnapper, one upside from the first film is that we know quite early on that our culprit is played by Michael Wincott. So far as American actors go, Wincott’s always pretty good with an English accent, and certainly knows his way around a creepy villain. He’s a good, dead-eyed sociopathic presence that anyone who loves their true crime shows will attest is shockingly accurate to the soulless look of many a real-life sociopath. On the downside, at first his character is forced to put on an elaborate facial disguise that doesn’t remotely convince. It’s shoddy makeup work in the extreme, so that’s a real shame. Still, if there’s a reason I’m calling this film a slight improvement over the original, it’s mostly to do with Wincott and his character’s identity being far less of a guessing game. Last time out, the mystery was a total bust. In addition to Wincott and the usually excellent Freeman, there’s solid work in smaller roles by Dylan Baker and Penelope Ann Miller.

I said earlier that by revealing Wincott early the film managed to improve over the first film by being less of a mystery. That is true, however the film does contain two late twists and sadly, like “Kiss the Girls” at least one of them is entirely transparent from the actor’s first moment onscreen. I’m going to reveal that person and discuss their performance, so ***** SPOILER WARNING ***** is hereby in place, and it’ll start in the next paragraph...

                                         *****

Monica Potter is absolutely dreadful and appallingly cast from moment one here, full-on Sigourney Weaver in “Galaxy Quest” levels of blonde bobble-head action movie chick posing (or to put an even more modern spin on it, Scarlett Johansson in any action movie she’s been in). You won’t for one moment believe that this woman could possibly be a Secret Service agent. She’s also entirely obvious, acting suspicious from moment one, and completely distracting. The director either stupidly instructed her to do so, or really dropped the ball on this one because Stevie Wonder could see that this chick’s in league with Wincott somehow. So even with Wincott and his character avoiding the pitfall of the first film, Tamahori, Potter, and screenwriter Marc Moss (whose only other screenwriting credit to date is the subsequent Patterson adaptation “Alex Cross”) fall right into it from moment one. I put most of the blame on the director and actress however, as the transparency is right there on the screen (ironic, eh?) in the actress’ performance and framing in every scene. On the plus side, Potter’s role in things really isn’t as important as Wincott’s for the majority of the film, so I think that gives the film an ever-so slight edge over “Kiss the Girls”. Even better, there’s far less red herrings-for-the-sake-of-it than there were in the earlier film, which shat me to no end with that film. Unfortunately I have to report that this film features one of the weakest music scores in the otherwise brilliant career of my favourite film composer, the late Jerry Goldsmith (“Planet of the Apes”, “The Omen”, “Star Trek: First Contact”). It’s full of stock-standard piano cues ripped from every film of this type you’ve ever come across. It’s a bit lazy.

A few good performances, one absolutely dreadful one, this is a watchable but completely unsurprising serial killer thriller. Preposterous at times too, but well-matched Morgan Freeman and creepy Michael Wincott keep you from turning it off. A lively pace helps, too.  

Rating: C+