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The Bone Collector

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The Bone Collector (1999)

November. 05,1999
|
6.7
|
R
| Drama Thriller Crime Mystery
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Rookie cop, Amelia Donaghy reluctantly teams with Lincoln Rhyme – formerly the department's top homicide detective but now paralyzed as a result of a spinal injury – to catch a grisly serial killer dubbed 'The Bone Collector'. The murderer's special signature is to leave tantalizing clues based on the grim remains of his crimes.

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ThiefHott
1999/11/05

Too much of everything

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Exoticalot
1999/11/06

People are voting emotionally.

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BelSports
1999/11/07

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

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Billy Ollie
1999/11/08

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

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andrewpeterfarrow
1999/11/09

Great story, that keeps you on edge all the way through, I'm sure it will inspire to read all the Deaver books. A must see!

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Christopher Evans
1999/11/10

The director of this film (Noyce) likes to try to emulate the style of the great Alfred Hitchcock and in the stylish shooting and thriller themes he is again very much making that effort. Sadly though this film is totally unconvincing and preposterous in many ways so it falls very short.The story has Denzel Washington as Rhyme Lincoln, a paraplegic forensic expert whose injuries were sustained in his police work. He continues to advise forensic police and becomes actively involved in investigating a series of killings where the killer leaves clues deliberately. Angelina Jolie plays a young cop who deals well with a crime scene and is then roped in by Washington to be his eyes and ears at subsequent crime scenes.The whole plot is so incredibly hard to believe. The cliched cops pulling in different directions with some acting outside guidelines and others trying to wrestle control of the case away from Lincoln do not quite ring true as a realistic way a police investigation could be carried out but that is a tiny criticism compared to the more glaring issues:Why does Lincoln entrust, and even force, a young inexperienced cop to carry out forensic investigations of crime scenes alone? She did what he thought was the right thing in her initial treatment of a crime scene but that is not remotely convincing as a reason for Lincoln or commanding officers to let this untrained cop loose on crime scenes alone. Not only that but she proves time and time again to be totally inadequate for this role as she is extremely scared and disturbed by the crime scenes and does numerous things which are bizarrely not shown as problems but would, in reality, totally destroy all forensic evidence. She shoots a rat which would spatter rat remains all over the forensic scene, she handles objects before taking any forensic precautions, photos, prints etc. She is slow and reluctant at all times wasting precious time. She does not show any great insight at all until, predictably, discovering the killer is aiming to kill Lincoln. Something Lincoln in his wisdom, fails to spot. Lincoln even pressures her to saw off the hands of a recently killed victim to remove the handcuffs for evidence without ANY forensic treatment of the scene whatsoever. Nobody has photographed the scene, taken prints, searched for evidence in any way yet he wants her to saw through the victim, covering all the evidence with blood just to get the cuffs!! And she is totally unwilling to do it anyway as she is too squeamish. It is totally bizarre!In addition to all the crazily unconvincing police work we have to try to believe the killer is another former forensics guy motivated by revenge against Lincoln for 'ruining his career' and causing him to go to jail for previously mishandling evidence. I guessed thew guy was the killer as soon as I saw him so it was predictable but it is totally unconvincing that motivated by revenge on Lincoln he carries out an incredibly risky and convoluted series of murders going to exceptional trouble to kill innocent people in bizarre ways just so he can leave a trail of clues which, if Lincoln succeeded in unpicking, would stop him from getting his revenge at all!! Indeed Lincoln fails to spot the clues lead to him being the final victim and the killer makes an attempt on Lincoln's life so what was the point of all the murders and clues?!! It lead nowhere and, in fact, the killer had access to Lincoln numerous occasions in his fake role of helping Lincoln so he could have killed him at any time!! If there was a point to the killings, either leading to an otherwise unavailable opportunity to confront Lincoln or in some way disgracing Lincoln that would be good but there is absolutely no point to all the murders and clues at all. The killer just breaks in and attempts to kill Lincoln as he could have done at any point since his release from jail.Washington then manages to fight the killer off despite being a paraplegic which is hard to believe and Angelina Jolie arrives in the nick of time to rescue him in a predictable, cliched anticlimax. Finally, just to top it all off, Lincoln is then shown in a closing scene up and about in a wheelchair seeming inexplicably healthier, stronger and more independent. There is no mention of the seizures that have blighted his recent life or any explanation given for his incredible improvement in ability to be out of the bed he had been confined to. Then Jolie is revealed to be romantically involved with Lincoln in a final, insultingly cliched and unconvincing happy ending.The good things about the film were that it was well filmed visually, the acting of Washington was engaging and high quality as usual, other acting was not bad and there was brainless entertainment from it all if you just completely do not bother to think about any of it. As a result it would be unfair to rate this 1 or 2 out of 10 as there are worse films around but it cannot be higher than a 3 out of 10 really as it is just so badly thought through and unbelievable.

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Modern Monsters
1999/11/11

Does one remember the 90s, when serial killers walk the Earth, before being wiped out by the triple meteor of vampires/super heroes/zombies? Well, they were quite the thing, that lot, after Seven and The Silence of the Lambs or, should one respect chronology, Manhunter blossomed on screen. It quickly went downhill after those three, spawning absurdities like 10+ seasons of Criminal Minds and basically most of the thriller genre clichés. Still, some of their strange fruits were brought quite near to ripeness, including this one.Considering, as it is a rule here, that everyone reading this have seen it or might experience a pleasant surprise either enjoying or deriding the movie, one will not recap much of the action (this is reserved for very, very bad oldies). Just know that Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington, good as good can be even though, or because, he's basically a talking head) a quadriplegic forensic expert, teams with rookie Amelia Dinghy (Angelina Jolie, better at expressing rebellion than emotion at that early stage of her career) to solve a puzzle created by the titular vicious killer, even though no one calls him such during the movie and he's not really collecting bones. Oh well.Queen Latifah does a terrific job at incarnating beloved nurse Thelma. Watch her doing nothing but receiving information but oh so well. Lord, the woman is gifted. She swallows the scenes she has nothing to do into, only acting normal and empathetic. If a movie has to be judged by the characters it creates, her performance only is worth your time. She meets a gruesome and undignified end, though, considering she's black and stuff. Fat, one thinks is the word. One has a secret version of the movie in which the villain is killed when Thelma saves the day, and one thinks it's a better version because it would spare us a corny ending which does all it can to ruin everything that preceded it. And that's too bad, because what preceded is far from bad.Incongruously enshrined in a majestic Craig Armstrong score, The Bone Collector is visually fluid, courtesy of Phillip Noyce, its director. Grue, more left to the imagination than depicted, is vague but merciless. The wagon loses its wheels around the 1:30 mark, because time is not kind to technology and/or twist endings, and there is this embarrassing Christmas finale that no serial killer movie of one's knowledge has ever attempted, and never will again, one hopes. No one wants a thriller to end like The Cosby Show, with a tie in lieu of a sweater.As usual, if one takes the killer's point of view and rewinds, it's all smoke and mirrors and the writing does not hold water. But still, the thing is quite good for 90mn, and that is more that one can say of most movies of the same vein. And casting a quadriplegic black hero with a great black nurse in the same movie is no small achievement. Think talent, no quotas. Feels good.

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Tweekums
1999/11/12

Protagonist Lincoln Rhyme is a former detective and a forensics expert who was left a quadriplegic after an accident. He is not enjoying life and tries to persuade a doctor friend to help him commit suicide… before that can happen he is approached by colleagues wanting help. The film's other protagonist, rookie cop Amelia Donaghy, is the first police officer at a murder scene and impresses Rhyme with the way she processes the scene… so much so that he wants her on the case. The dead man was last seen entering a taxi with his wife and she is still missing. Rhyme, with the help of forensics experts, processes the clues deliberately left by the killer workout where the killer is holding the woman and when he intends to kill her. Donaghy heads to the site with other cops but they are too late to save her. This isn't the end though; clues point to further victims as well as suggesting that the killer is forensically aware and has an interest crimes and locations from the turn of the twentieth century. Before the case can be solved Rhyme and Donaghy will have to decode a lot more clues, deal with incompetent senior officers and face personal danger.This film may contain plenty of clichés but it is still effective. Denzel Washington impresses as Rhyme; apart from the opening flashback scene he spends almost the entire film lying in bed. Angelina Jolie is also good as Donadhy; making us believe in her character even when things get a bit far-fetched. The deaths are a bit gruesome but either take place off screen or the scene ends before things get nasty. The ending is a bit cliché as the killer targets Rhyme and it turns out that everything we've seen is part of his attempt to beat Rhyme as he holds him responsible for things that went wrong in his life. This does at least lead to a fight where an able-bodied is badly injured by quadriplegic man! There are plenty of tense moments throughout the film and the identity of the killer isn't obvious. Overall a solid thriller that fans of the genre should enjoy.

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