Tag: crime

Selected Scenes: The Bone Collector

Spoiler Alert!

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Lincoln Rhyme is a living legend among the NYPD elite, and it’s a wonder he’s still living. The brilliant homicide detective-slash-criminologist has written the book – several in fact – on investigating crime, but since a tragic accident left him quadriplegic and bed-ridden he has lost the will to live. How can he do what he was born to when, along with being isolated, his colleagues think he’s more of a washed-up celebrity then the force of nature he was? A new serial killer is prowling the streets. When Rhyme is consulted on the crime scene photos, he sees a way to work from home: by letting the photographer, rookie Amelia Donaghy, be his eyes-and-ears on the ground. With his almost-supernatural ability to deduce and the cop’s instincts she inherited from her father, the duo grind the case out together but not quickly enough to save this murderer’s victims from the tauntingly-complex time-sensitive contraptions he has them hooked up to. Rhyme and Donaghy find out the killer is using a crime novel as his template and with the last murder in the book completed, he turns his attention to Rhyme. Turns out, the killer is not only one of Rhyme’s medical orderlies but a corrupt ex-cop who Lincoln slandered in one of his true-crime books, who was then “used as a human toilet” in prison and released with a taste for elaborately-plotted vengeance. How will Lincoln get himself out of this jam? Can he count on the new friends he made along the way? Will their kindness inspire a new joie-de-vivre in this crippled husk of a man? Am I digging for character depth too deeply in a movie where the lead actor got to lie down on a bed for ninety-nine percent of the time?

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Now Available on Laserdisc: State of Grace

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Sean Penn belongs to the same club of hellions as Rex Harrison. He may have flip-flopped a few times from lovable drunk to violent wife beater but this was the same actor who bit off his toenails in At Close Range. How can you predict the unpredictable? Did anyone think that Nicholas Cage would get himself into debt from buying dinosaur bones? And while we’re on the subject of controversial celebrities, why does Kevin Spacey lose his career while Sean Penn is still allowed to work? Is it because one abused minors while the other abused women? Shouldn’t everything evil be equally bad? Maybe Penn’s recent philanthropy has cleaned the slate for a good deal of people; but his charity has felt largely like penance for his mean streak, even though he just can’t seem to keep his trademark temper under control! Come on man, you were banging Charlize Theron! And she was not putting up with ANY of his shit. Can we say the same for Robin Wright? What about his State of Grace co-star Gary Oldman’s ex-wife? Can we say the same for all victims of abuse and trauma? What about Gary Oldman? When will I stop digging this hole for myself?

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Posted on by wd 0