Arbitrary Letter Grade
D
My review of Untraceable on Blu-ray Disc is online at filmfreakcentral.net:
The makers of Untraceable never acknowledge their film's own ranking on the torture-as-entertainment scale. Instead, they're hell-bent on the idea that the online masses, guilty of exercising poor taste, are somehow complicit in the worst kinds of crimes that might be committed somewhere on the Internet by some sicko craving an audience. The hectoring is so relentless that Untraceable obviously means to send that message to its own audience--the sort of sick fucks who would pay to see this movie in the first place. (For whatever reason, moralizing filmmakers from Michael Haneke on down the line often fail to implicate themselves in that downward spiral they so disdain.) D
Right on. All I can think with filmmakers like that is, "You spent months -- maybe years -- with this material. I'm only spending 100 minutes with it. Who's the real sicko here?"