If I could count how many cookie cutter serial killer thrillers have come over the years, I'd have a list literally twenty pages long. I'm serious. I have yet to see an actual serial killer movie that has wowed me since "Seven" and I doubt that there will ever be one again. This time around in yet another derivative thriller, we meet Illeana, a detective who's not your normal detective (aren't they all?) and is on the track of a serial killer (aren't they all?) whose offing helpless victims along the countryside (don’t they all?).

Before I continue explaining this frustrating movie any further, I can sum up this (and many other serial killer movies in the last five years) with this equation consisting of W, X, Y, and Z. Take notes. Lead character Y is unkempt and brilliant and sexy, serial killer X is brilliant and sly, Lead character Y is teamed with Supporting character Z, and they form uneasy partnership working for their authorities while they investigate serial killer X who keeps giving them the run around always one step ahead. Lead character Y finds link to serial killer X which leads to plot twist and or major break in the case, Lead character Y unwisely bonds with murder suspect W and falls deep and has love affair despite the anger of Supporting character Z, later we discover that Murder suspect W may or may not have a connection to, or may be Serial Killer X, serial killer X evades officers/profiles/detectives for majority of the movie and it all leads to climactic battle where we discover who or whom Serial killer X is. It’s all been done before! Give us something new!

All of it just ends up becoming redundant and very predictable. And what's worse is it seems the writers are transferring the routine "CSI" type formulas from TV to movies? What the hell is this? We learn nothing of any of the characters, they're completely focused on the case, we're never given anything to relate to them, nor do they let us get close to them. This is not a movie; it's merely a big budget extension of the unoriginal series we normally see on television. We're introduced to Ileana who, as usual, is a bit out of the ordinary as a detective. And she demonstrates such by lying in the grave of the victims on the crime scene. Question: who the hell lies in a victim's grave? Is that a weird attempt to establish the main character as something other than your normal unkempt, unorthodox, serial killer heroine antagonist sleuth? And last I checked you're not supposed to disturb the crime scene.

As always the writers try to introduce a slew of supporting characters trying to throw us off the trail with these people whom are solely on screen for the purposes of being red herring's, because in the beginning we're introduced to the killer and explained that the killer has been borrowing people's faces changing his appearance for ever, so we're given a lot of shady people who may or may not be our killer, but it becomes painfully obvious who the killer is. There's Olivier Martinez who has the chance to show he can act, and he just can't. Lately all his roles in the US are comprised of being a villain or a pretty face with little dialogue, but here he's just bland. He has zero chemistry with Jolie's character as the writers try to force the whole mismatched teaming on us, and I just didn't buy it, then there's Gena Rowlands whose very wasted here as the serial killers mother who may be the only one who can identify her son, but she's rarely featured, there's Ethan Hawke a rich art connoisseur who witnessed a murder from the killer but his role is so vapid it's not even funny, and then, for some reason, we're introduced to Keifer Sutherland's character who shows up halfway through the movie.

The introduction of Sutherland is abrupt just like his exit and his role is really thankless, and very indicative of a hackneyed screenplay. There's no reason why he's in the movie other than being a walking plot device, but, anyone who knows murder mysteries knows who the killer is already, and the plot just continues getting more and more ridiculous as we progress through the plot. There are obvious and immense lapses in logic during this movie that just made no sense, why is Sutherland's character introduced and then is offed in only ten minutes? What was the point of that car chase, and do cars explode so quickly like that? Ileana lies in the bed of the serial killer and is attacked by the serial killer who attacks her, she kicks him and he runs away? If he's such a great serial killer, why not kill her while she was alone before she drew her gun? It made no sense. Why are police so utterly stupid in these movies? And then when you think the movie can't get anymore ridiculous it keeps going with a climax that goes on and on and on way too long and the movie just keeps getting more and more ridiculous with one of the stupidest climaxes I've ever seen in a thriller. God bless you if you can sit through this without fast-forwarding it.

Ah, yet another "Seven" rip-off. How much of these cookie cutter serial killer/profiler "thrillers" must we sit through? This is just another routine, cookie-cutter, really ridiculous crime thriller with zero thrills and a lot of nonsense which essentially adds up to nothing but a jumbled muddled film.

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