"The Bone Collector"

With a knick-knack, paddy-wack, Phillip Noyce makes this "Bone" a dog.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Nov 5, 1999 | There's only one good reason to see "The Bone Collector," and her name is Angelina Jolie. Jolie, as a smart and conscientious New York cop who suddenly finds herself shoehorned uncomfortably into the role of forensic investigator, gives so much more than the movie even asks of her. While it mashes its way through its obvious mission, preoccupied with endless gross-outs and emotional button-pushing, Jolie goes about her business quietly. The light of her performance shines out through the picture's leaks and cracks.

Unfortunately, there are so many of those that space won't allow me to list them here. It's enough to tell you that "The Bone Collector" is another one of those unpleasant serial-killer movies that claims to be possessed of higher intelligence -- in other words, it's smarter than your average serial-killer movie. You see this in the way the killer leaves ingenious clues for his pursuers. And although some of the Sherlock Holmes-style clues in "The Bone Collector" are pretty clever and rather entertaining, they don't add up to much in light of the eventual absurd revelation of the killer's motive.

"The Bone Collector" is virtually humorless -- also, supposedly, a sign of brains, though I can't for the life of me figure out why. We're asked to accept the grimmest murder scenarios possible, and we're told in relentless detail exactly what happened: For example, a college student is left, bound, bleeding and mutilated (but alive), in an abandoned slaughterhouse so that rats can feed on his bloody flesh.

We don't see the rats at work in close-up. In fact, director Phillip Noyce shoots all the action cagily, so that we never actually see any of these horrendous deeds being done. But we do get lingering shots of flesh that's been surgically cut so that we can see exposed bone, or wounds that have been nibbled at by rodents. Audiences are supposed to take such artless unpleasantries in stride, I guess, but their cumulative effect only makes you feel beaten up and queasy. The pulsing subterranean message of "The Bone Collector" seems to be that police work ain't kid stuff, y'know, and neither is serial killing.

It's too bad "The Bone Collector" isn't smarter in the genuine sense of the word. Its premise (the screenplay was adapted by Jeremy Iacone from Jeffery Deaver's novel) could have made for a creepily engaging thriller. Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington) is a top forensics specialist who's become paralyzed from the neck down, except for the use of one pointer finger (the better to click his mouse with). His situation is made worse by the fact that he's subject to dangerous seizures that could send him straight into a coma. Hence, he's lost his will to live.

His picture brightens, though, when he meets Amelia Donaghy, a poised, intuitive cop. He drafts her to work with him on a tough serial-murder case. The perpetrator mutilates his victims before killing them, and in each instance leaves a clue to the next murder, thus initiating a race against the clock. Although Lincoln is bedridden, he has a lot of ace computer equipment handy to help him track the villain. Amelia can do all the legwork Lincoln can't, but she's also smart enough to match wits with him, and their easy affection for each other is the most believable, and most enjoyable, angle of the story.

But Noyce ("The Saint," "Sliver"), so intent on rubbing our noses in the ghastliness of the murders, only ends up distracting us from the skill of his actors. His clumsiness really comes to the fore in an early scene in which Amelia, receiving instructions from Lincoln via a headset, walks through a murder scene. He asks her to describe what she sees, and instead of allowing her to simply interpret what's around her -- the subtlety of which would have made the sequence that much more gripping -- he makes it a point to show us the gory details as she notices them.

"The Bone Collector" does feature two Teflon supporting performances. Queen Latifah is proving to be a consistently delightful presence in every movie in which she appears, and this one is no exception. As Lincoln's nurse, she tends to him with a kind of no-nonsense chaffing that in any fair and just world ought to be enough to make an infirm man walk.

The hulking charmer Luis Guzman, as a refreshingly down-to-earth computer guy, serves up the few laughs "The Bone Collector" has to offer. Kibbitzing with Lincoln about his mother, he asks incredulously, "She's 76 and she's shtupping some guy named Morris, can you believe that?" The line is so casual and throwaway that it almost palpably lightens the movie, for a few seconds at least.

Washington is so restrained here that he's almost always a complete downer. That's disappointing for an actor as charismatic and as conscientious he is. But he loosens up, and brightens up, in every one of his scenes with Jolie. And can you blame him? Her Amelia has that sooty, weary-around-the-eyes look, and you can understand it completely given the weightiness of her new job. When she comes across the body of one of the killer's victims, she can barely get out the words "Oh, God." She doesn't need to. The gravity of what's in front of her is reflected in the heavy grayness around her eyes.

That's exactly the kind of anguish mingled with dutiful professionalism that a good woman cop would be likely to feel when the evidence of another woman's suffering looms up so nakedly before her. Jolie doesn't overdramatize anything: Every movement and every expression is effortless, natural. Even as "The Bone Collector" plods on, fixating on each dingy or bloody detail, Jolie infuses the picture with a kind of grace. In the midst of all its ugliness, she alone shows any understanding of the rag and bone shop of the heart. Everyone else is just rummaging around.

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