Film Review: Along Came a Spider

Director: Lee Tamahori

A 2001 crime drama that somehow manages to look far more dated than it actually was, it looks like something straight out of the mid-90s.  The screenplay by Marc Moss was adapted from the 1993 novel of the same title by James Patterson, but many of the key plot elements of the book were eliminated. This was presumably at the detriment of the movie as a whole because the key plot elements from the book can hardly have been worse than the key plot elements they decided to introduce.

Detective Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) retires from the police force after losing control of a sting operation that results in a colleagues death. He's drawn back in when the daughter of a US senator is abducted and the kidnapper calls him directly to alert him to the fact. From there he works out the kidnapper is looking to emulate the "crime of the century" which was the nickname for the 1932 Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping. He begins to work with U.S. Secret Service Special Agent Jezzie Flannigan (Monica Potter) to try and solve the case.

Alex Cross and Jezzie Flannigan at the school where Megan was abducted

The film is clear from the outset that the mystery behind the disappearances is deeper than what is initially discovered by Alex Cross, we learn who the kidnapper is immediately so the suspense is supposedly kept in what may happen in the final act. When the finale does become clear its rather preposterous and unbelievable that it makes the rather disappointing slog through the first two acts a bit of a waste really. None of the acting within the film was particularly noteworthy in either a positive or negative sense, it was all very average. In the end its a rather hollow thriller that never really traps you in its web.

1/4 Poor twists follows a rather dull kidnap plot