Very disappointing...

Thanks for the memories!

Sorry, this movie sucks

Bad Acting and worse Bad Screenplay

If you like your mysteries fast paced and spoon fed, then THIS film is not for you. Drags and drags and you'll be tempted to turn it off.But don't. While the ending could have been better and lacked what you'd expect from the build up, the film is still good and worth a watch. The tie in at the end was a good touch and nicely ended it all. For patient viewers ONLY.

SUSPECT ZERO is a serial killer film that attempts to emulate the success of SEVEN and its ilk but instead makes a mess of it thanks to some really dodgy direction, the worst I've seen in a mainstream Hollywood film in a while. Everything about the style makes it look incredibly dated and like it belongs in the early 1990s instead of the mid-2000s.It doesn't help that the film is saddled with a nonsensical plot and lots of badly edited scenes that barely begin to make sense, at least up until half an hour before the end. Advertising would have you believe this to be a straightforward serial killer outing about a killer who kills other killers (a plot popularised on TV these days in DEXTER) but instead it turns out to be some semi-supernatural thriller about America's involvement in 'Psy Ops', or psychic operations, so we get loads of guff about remote viewing and silly surveillance-style shots.Mired right in the middle of this mess is Aaron Eckhart, whose acting is of the calibre that you wouldn't believe he made it as a successful actor after this. Supporting him is Carrie-Anne Moss, delivering another icy cold turn as a supposedly sympathetic FBI agent, and Ben Kingsley, whose acting varies as the film progresses. The good news is that half an hour before the end it all begins to make sense and comes together quite nicely with a chase climax, but sadly that happens way too late in the game to make this a decent movie.

"Suspect Zero" was based on a famous screenplay by Zak Penn. Penn's story revolved around the idea of a breed of serial killers who, because they are super intelligent, are able to swim under the radar and kill for indefinite periods of time without being caught. Penn mirrored such serial killers to an allegory about 50 foot sharks, mythical creatures which marine biologists have no proof exist, but which hypothetically could. "For a 50-foot shark, the ocean would be a never-ending buffet table," one character says. "He could feed off whales, octopus; he'd never have any need to surface or come to shore. If there was a 50-foot shark, we wouldn't know about it. We'd never see them." Penn's script then watched as an FBI agent teams up with an older, maverick agent who has spent his life tracking "suspect zero", a creature he believes to be a super serial killer.Penn's script was hot property in Hollywood during the late 1990s. It jumped from studio to studio, changed hands a number of times, being re-written and re-written every step of the way. It eventually landed in the lap of director E. Elias Merhinge, who forced more rewrites, threw in a supernatural "remote viewing" subplot, re-imagined numerous characters and sucked Penn's tale of all life. The result became a terrible movie which bore little resemblance to Penn's script and which, like the 50-foot shark, quickly sunk under the radar.Amongst the cast, only actor Aaron Eckhart escapes with dignity. The film co-stars Ben Kingsley in yet another absurd, ridiculous role.5/10 – Worth no viewings.

This film was absolutely a wonderful treat to watch. Ben Kingsley was definitely at the top of this game. Ben plays this quasi serial killer named Benjamin O'Ryan. We are perfectly forced to remain within the constraints of the way this story is told that makes it so difficult to stop watching. We soon find ourselves opening up to the other characters in this film such a our FBI investigator Thomas Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart). Thomas seems to have his own little hidden secret in which were are soon exposed to. What's so creepy about this film is this Benjamin's uncanny gift of remote viewing, which is a highly unlikely situation with most people. The federal government was to have supposedly started this remote viewing project from a spin-off of a Russian program considered to do the same things.During the development of the story we soon are introduced to another investigator named Fran Kulog (Carrie-Anne Moss) who had supposedly earlier been involved with Thomas Mackelway in a relationship. However, we soon find out that this relationship had somehow gone sour because Thomas was tortured by his incessant desire to track down one of the scummiest serial killers out there. We discover that Thomas actually had gone across the border into Mexico without prior approval to do so and kidnapped this rapist Raymond Starkey (Keith Campbell). Thomas was suspended for doing this and was told to get some psychological help. At every step of the way, Benjamin taunts Thomas by purposefully leaving clues designated to perpetuate his game-like killing of these people. Thomas Mackelway arrives in Albuquerque, and his first case is the murder of a traveling salesman, Harold Speck (Kevin Chamberlin), who had a zero mark on his body. The FBI was called to the scene since the body was found in a car located just across the state line. Thomas grows increasingly estranged by the case & his insanity grows all encompassing as he tries to find the link between the victims that will lead him to their killer.The film's intensity is only too well topped off by explicit details of newspaper clippings and hundreds of well-composed charcoal drawings, many of which help drive the plot along. There is a dark, demonic imagery involved with this film which I think should be present since we are dealing with a gruesome subject. We find both men torturing themselves within their own minds, thusly, we find caught up in a reverie of overlapping and sometimes mis-shapen images that are supposedly mimicking blurring thoughts of a remote or E.S.P. type origin.The visual style reminded me of "Seven" (1995) which seemed to be perfectly captured by Director David Fincher. However no director has yet come as close to match Fincher's unique visual composition and cinematography. All of the shots in Seven are carefully composed and never falter in its editing & pace.We also have a very strong performance from Harry Lennix who played Rich Carlton, Thomas Mackelway's superior who always seems to have some kind of sarcastic comment to throw out to get Thomas's head out of the clouds.Ultimately in the end, the film achieves great power during the confrontation between Thomas, Benjamin, and Fran. The showdown with undiscovered serial finally comes to a head. We finally discover how disturbed Benjamin really is when he begs Thomas to go ahead and kill him just as he has seen in his visions since he has and will continue to be tortured by these paranormal occurrences.