In yet another thriller for the internet age, Untraceable finds the FBI cybercrimes division in Portland working to track down a murderer that carries out his crimes in full public view over a streaming video website. Naturally they must find him and stop him before he can kill again, but they are stymied at every turn by moderately plausible technobabble about hacked Russian DNS servers and rapidly changing IP algorithms, so they must ultimately rely on old-fashioned police work involving witness interviews, basement construction-age estimates, and so on. It is at heart a boilerplate genre film, indistinguishable in most ways from dozens or hundreds of other thrillers, all of sufficient workmanlike quality to provide an entertaining distraction without really standing out years or even months later.

There were two important distinctions from the mold, however. The first was a Saw-like twist on the murders themselves. After setting up his death traps, the killer tied their activations to the number of connections open to the streaming video site. If people were not watching, nothing bad would happen to the victims. So he was able to split responsibility with a monolithic and voraciously thrill-seeking public that has long since been anesthetized to images of violence. And the second was the depiction of Diane Lane’s lead investigator. It wasn’t that she was a capable woman who was really good at the technical side of her job and simultaneously good at taking care of herself. Hollywood does that all the time, these days. What impressed me was that the script didn’t make a special note of these qualities in her. In a way, I feel like by pointing it out myself, I’m reducing the awesomeness of them not having done so; but it’s such a rare thing that it struck me, and I want to hand out the kudos in the hopes that this becomes as common as the tough, capable chick that everyone feels a need to mention just how tough and capable she is in today’s cinema.

I was a little disappointed by it not being the kind of plot you could really unravel and solve in advance, and also by only minimal discussion of the sociology of Americans inherent in these traps garnering enough viewership to kill their victims. But I really like to figure things out in advance, and I’m really interested in the kinds of things that we’ll collectively, anonymously accept that we would be horrified over in more individual situations, and I can’t really fault the writer for having a different focus. Certainly my overall impression wasn’t reduced by these omissions.

Also, despite being a Tuesday afternoon, there was a pretty girl in the theater. So, that’s alright.