Mindhunters

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Ian Stanley reviews

Mindhunters
Distributed by
Nontanund Entertainment

    Cover

  • Cert:
  • Running time: 106 minutes
  • Year: 2004
  • Pressing: 2005
  • UK Cinema release: June 17th 2005
  • Region(s): 0, PAL
  • Chapters: 12
  • Sound: Dolby Digital 5.1
  • Languages: English, Thai
  • Subtitles: English, Thai
  • Widescreen: 1.78:1
  • 16:9-Enhanced: Yes
  • Macrovision: No
  • Disc Format: DVD 5
  • Price: $7.50
  • Extras: Trailers

    Director:

      Renny Harlin

Cast:

    Bobby Whitman: Eion Bailey
    Vince Sherman: Clifton Collins Jr.
    Rafe Perry: Will Kemp
    Jake Harris: Val Kilmer
    Lucas Harper: Jonny Lee Miller
    Sara Moore: Kathryn Morris
    J.D. Reston: Christian Slater
    Gabe Jensen: LL Cool J
    Nicole Willis: Patricia Velasquez

Dimension Films are both a blessing and a curse to the world of Genre Cinema.,

An offshoot of Miramax Films they handle the distribution of the sci-fi, fantasy and horror films that the Oscar-chasing parent company doesn’t really care to have on its books. It is a blessing as it has produced some of the most notable genre films of recent years, including the Scream series, Below and Equilibrium. It is a curse because it often has so little belief in its own films (and their intended audiences) that it routinely shelves and buries them.

The latest movie to befall the curse of Dimension is Mindhunters, a film that has languished in their vault for around 2 years (it was also certified as a 15 by the BBFC in March 2004) and will finally be receiving a belated US theatrical release in May of this year (2005), and a UK release in June. Fortunately, those who look a little further afield can now import this film, on a perfectly legitimate Thai disc, for their own home perusal.

The premise of Mindhunters is that a group of FBI recruits are left alone on a deserted island as the final part of their ‘Psychological Profiler’ training. On this island is a training facility that is used by most law enforcement and military services. Whilst there they will find a staged murder scene and, from the evidence they gather, they are supposed to work the case and develop a viable profile of the killer in two days (one of the bits of info given in the film is that any murder that’s not solved within 48 hours is unlikely to be solved at all).

Unfortunately for them, also on the island is a real-life and brilliant serial killer who duly starts to pick the recruits off one by one in increasingly imaginative ways. As such, the developing of a viable profile is no longer an exercise, and the cost of failing to do this is their lives.

“Hey Chris, remember when Tony Scott used to call… Heh, heh, heh!”

Directed by the resolutely mainstream Renny Harlin, Mindhunters pretty much defines trash cinema but it is guiltily entertaining for the majority of its duration. From the off it is apparent that it’s meant to serve as nothing more than 100 minutes of disposable cinema, engineered to give audiences a few scares, some gore and a couple of decent set-pieces. In these regards it is a complete success. Some of the set pieces presented in the film are very good and are excitingly put together; the chief of these is where a character has to climb across a corridor full of electrified water. Such moments can’t help but bring back warm fuzzy memories of a previous Harlin movie, Cliffhanger.

There are also one or two genuinely good moments in the movie that come as somewhat of a surprise, and also serve as an indication of what the movie could have been had this tone been consistently maintained. One such moment is when the first victim amongst the group gets taken. This sequence is done in such a pitch perfect, and grandiose, manner that the disbelief felt by the group as they watch the death is mirrored by that of the audience. It probably helps that the manner of the victim’s demise is gloriously OTT as, indeed, are the deaths of the majority of the characters (some almost matching Final Destination 2 in both their gruesomeness and inventiveness).

Sadly it’s not all ‘good news. The jumps and shocks are mainly of the cheap variety rather than those built through creating tension and a sustained atmosphere of dread. These may be good enough to get a jump out of the undemanding (presumably late-teen) audience that this movie is aimed at, but I suspect that most other people will remain unmoved.

The movie also collapses under the weight of its own contrivances in the final act. When it comes down to the final few remaining characters the movie tries anything it can to wrong-foot the audience and keep the identity of the killer a secret. Sadly, this includes people spouting really suspicious ‘asides’ and acting unnaturally shifty and out of character.

Mindhunters is also one of the movies that has had its ending dictated through the use of ‘Test Audiences’ rather than through a clear vision by the screenwriter or director. It seems that multiple endings were filmed and the one that proved most popular with audiences was the one that they went with. Whilst I’m not sure how extensive these endings were, the one that they chose to go with is pretty ludicrous, containing an extended martial arts fight out of nowhere, guns that fire underwater and what obviously should have been a fatal wound being casually shrugged off.

“Argh… Stinking puzzle box!!!”

Renny Harlin has managed to cobble together a cast that is lacking in real stars but contains a good few character actors that are (to be honest) above this type of material, but have just been lacking the hits of late. The performances given by the cast vary from rather poor to just above average, none of them seem to play above the level of the material (keeping their tongues firmly in their cheeks about the whole affair).

Although the cover art pretty heavily pimps Val Kilmer’s appearance in the movie, he’s not really in it that much. His role ultimately amounts to little more than an extended cameo, but even from that it’s pretty obvious that his heart’s not really in it. He plays his role as a caricature rather than an actual character, which is doubly disappointing given his recent solid work in such movies as The Salton Sea and Spartan.

Mindhunters marks Christian Slater‘s second movie with Kilmer, (The first being Kilmer’s half-onscreen performance as Elvis in Tony Scott’s True Romance, fact fans). Slater’s performance here is yet another one of the notches marking his downward slide into obscurity. I’ve generally got a lot of time for the guy (having grown up on his movies like Heathers and Pump Up The Volume) and having seen him once giving rather solid performances films movies like Murder In The First, it’s sad to see him obviously slumming in trash like this, and working on his famed ‘Nicholson-lite Autopilot’. All I can say for Slater now, is that with both Mindhunters and Alone In The Dark on his CV this year alone, it seems it’s time for him to find a new agent.

LL Cool J once again plays, well, his amiable enough self essentially. If you’ve seen his performances in S.W.A.T. or his first movie with Harlin, (the equally trashy and enjoyable) Deep Blue Sea, then you’ll pretty much know what to expect from him here. Let’s face it though, who doesn’t like LL Cool J in a movie? The usually reliable Clifton Collins Jr. (Tigerland, Traffic), here, turns in his worst performance ever as a wheelchair-bound and semi-paranoid gun nut. His over the top surliness becomes increasingly grating as the movie goes on.

Jonny Lee Miller rehashes his ropey American accent from Hackers as Lucas Harper, the fearless wannabe leader of the group who has a crush on one of his colleagues. Eion Bailey (Band of Brothers) makes absolutely no impact on the viewer whatsoever and may as well not be in it. Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy and The Mummy Returns) starts off very much as a bland background character but as she gradually becomes more of a central character one comes to realise how bad her somewhat hysterical performance actually is. Finally we come to the token Brit played by Will Kemp (Van Helsing) who demonstrates here why (probably) he was replaced by an unconvincing CGI werewolf for the greater part of Stephen Sommers’ cack-fest!

The only cast member who puts in a performance of any real regard is Kathryn Morris (Minority Report, TV’s Cold Case) who shows the material much more respect than it actually deserves. As the Sara Moore character gradually comes to take centre stage the scriptwriters give her more to work with than the rest of the cast, so in effect, she manages to create a more fully fleshed out character.

The script by Wayne Kramer and Kevin Brodbin (along with un-credited doctoring work by Ehren ‘Arlington Road’ Kruger) is something of an odd mix. Later revelation of the killer’s methodology means that the characters of the group members have to hold true over the course of the movie and, in this regard, the film works (for the most part). This is not to go so far as to say that many of the group are developed beyond what LL Cool J’s character defines as “surface”, as they are not. There is, however, enough to ensure that the films own internal ‘logic’ holds true enough and that suspension of disbelief can be maintained.

The script’s explanation of one of the movie’s major contrivances, and central hook (that this training takes place on a spooky and abandoned island), is rather hard to swallow. When one of the characters brings this up, it is explained away with cod psychology and they are advised that they are “Isolated, alone and forgotten. That’s what it’s like to be in the mind of a sociopath.”

Oh, alright then??? Still, if you’re unable to get past such contrivances then you’re really watching the wrong movie! Another problem with the script is that some of the dialogue is genuinely atrocious. You can’t help but feel bad for the actor’s when they’re forced to seriously spout lines such as “Now is not the time for fear, people!” It also relies a little too heavily on needless one-liners, particularly ones that aren’t funny and serve no purpose other than to given an actor a ‘cool’ line to say. This is none more apparent in the film’s final act when the killer is revealed and subsequently becomes a ‘dire’logue spouting maniac.

Throughout his whole career, I don’t think that Renny Harlin has made anything but disposable trash, even what is arguably his best movie, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, is the weakest entry in that series, with the high gloss sheen lacking the grittier edge of John McTiernan’s two films. Harlin’s stylish visuals are probably Mindhunters’ strongest points. He works hard to keep the camera moving and makes use of quick cuts and flashes to inject a nice sense of energy and life into the proceedings.

Given the subject of the film and the abandoned setting, the movie is appropriately dark, but not in the same gritty, grimy way as Se7en and Millennium, it has a more mainstream and stylised look, shot through with cold blue hues. If I had to say that there were influences on the visuals here I would point more towards recent TV police procedural programs such as CSI and Cold Case. Indeed, during one particular sequence when the crew start to use forensics in order to unmask the killer, one can’t help but be reminded of CSI. Mindhunters is reported to have had a modest budget by Hollywood standards, however the visuals certainly don’t give this away.

To sum up, the opening 5-10 minutes of this film are an elaborate hoax that you will either accept, or will have you shaking your head in utter disgust at the ludicrousness of it all. Neither response is right or wrong but which one it evokes will give you some indication as to whether or not the remaining 90-odd minutes are for you. This film is trash, but much like most other Renny Harlin films it doesn’t really aspire to be anything more than that, and just concentrates on being solid disposable entertainment. In this aim it succeeds with style, but the results certainly won’t be to everyone’s taste.

Finally, a DVD’s explosive extra features lived up to their name…

This Thai disc is in PAL format (the same as the UK) and the film is presented in Anamorphic Widescreen at approximately the 1:78:1 (16:9) aspect ratio. The presentation is good by Thai standards, but it can’t really match the best work from more established DVD manufacturers, and as such, is a bit of a mixed bag.

For what is, essentially, a pretty dark film the black level is important, and I’m happy to report that the blacks on display are absolutely rock solid, there is no greying of any kind. Tempering this good point somewhat is the lack of any real shadow detail on display, which means that on more than one occasion it is quite difficult to make out what is going on. The picture overall is slightly soft, exhibiting a lack of fine detail, thankfully though the encoders have not tried to counter this through the over-use of edge enhancement, as I found very few intrusive examples of this.

The colours on display alternate between quite strong and rather washed out (although I suspect occurrences of the latter might be a stylistic choice), I did notice instances of colours bleeding into one another quite frequently though. Going back to the washed out colours, it is also fair to say that the skin tones are also rather unnatural, and the overall picture quality has an overly processed look to it, which is somewhat hard to describe. Without having seen this movie theatrically it is difficult to say whether this ‘look’ is intentional or not, so I’ll reserve judgement. On a final note I’ll say that the print used was spotless, I noticed no instances of any kind of print damage, which is to be expected given that this is such a recent movie.

The sound is available in two flavours, Dolby Digital 5.1 in both English and Thai, and for the purposes of this review I listened to the original English track. All in all for such a stylish movie that relies on sound to engineer its cheap jumps, the sound mix on this disc is somewhat subdued. Dialogue is always clear but the mix is engineered so that most of the sound comes from the front speakers; the rear surrounds barely get a look in. Indeed the only time they made a peep was nearing the end of the movie when there is a bit of a running gun battle. At this point the mix was actually quite active and involving, it’s just a shame the rest of it was not so. There is also a bit of a problem on the soundtrack at the 1:27:49 mark, the sound goes dull and muffled for about a minute or so, it’s not too bad but it does prove quite distracting at a rather important point in the movie.

The extra features on the disc only extend so far as to trailers. We get the theatrical trailer for Mindhunters (2:17) which is presented in Non-Anamorphic Widescreen at approximately 1:78:1 and contains fixed Thai subtitles.

The rest of the trailers are for the company’s other releases, we have those for the reportedly ‘ho-hum’ Korean actioner Tube, Michael Moore’s anti-Bush polemic Farenheit 9/11 (2:12), and finally the ace Korean martial-arts movie Arahan (2:11). All the trailers are presented in Non-Anamorphic widescreen at approximately 1:78:1 (except for Tube which is at 2:35:1) and Arahan’s also features burnt-in Thai subtitles.

Mindhunters is never going to win any awards (except for perhaps 2006’s Razzies) with it’s credibility breaking story and ropey acting, however, it does manage to be an entertaining way to spend 100 minutes. If you approach it from this respect then you should be able to derive some enjoyment out of it. If, however, you are looking for deeper insight into the role of psychological profilers in the FBI, then walk away. Now. This film is not for you!

The treatment it’s received on DVD is acceptable enough for the price. The picture is more than acceptable, if perhaps a little soft, and the soundtrack, whilst not very dynamic, gets the job done (despite a flaw or two). The lack of any extras, beyond trailers, is the only real letdown to be found here. An added bonus is, with the disc being both PAL and Region Free, it is easily playable on even the most basic of home-cinema set-ups. However, when you consider that this disc can be had for around £4 delivered, and is legitimately available months before both the predicted UK and US theatrical release dates, it represents somewhat of a bargain, if you think you’ll enjoy this film!

FILM CONTENT
PICTURE QUALITY
SOUND QUALITY
EXTRAS


OVERALL
Review copyright © Ian Stanley, 2005.

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