Opens September 8, 2000

FBI profilers can spend years trying to get into the mind of the criminals they dissect. It takes insight, intuition and an ability to connect A to B. Often these same talents are in short supply when it comes to Hollywood directors and writers, a fact that is especially apparent in the newest entry into the serial killer pantheon The Watcher. Call it a poor man's thriller if you will. While the story has potential, indeed quite a lot of potential, the film is more notable for how it squanders the latter than explores it.

With any film of this ilk, the filmmakers run the risk of seeming redundant. Not only is the genre one of the most beloved in the business, it's also one of the most difficult to pull off. Silence of the Lambs and Seven are forever etched into the filmgoer's brain because they were visually and emotionally arresting. Yet for every film like these two, there are ten others -- take the recent mess that was The Cell -- that tried and failed. So, it goes without saying that The Watcher has a lot to live up to.

Its premise is potentially promising because the writers try to come at the story from the perspective of character. Indeed, if anything, this film should be a character drama, pitting the prototypical good guy against bad guy. But al too quickly, the story falls apart. Perhaps it's because hero Joel Campbell (James Spader) is so stereotypical. Emotionally and physically crippled by his job, he is now a shell of a man, replete with hollow eyes and a five-inch bruise where he constantly injects migraine medication. As he tells his therapist Polly (Marisa Tomei), "I go places and forget why I'm there."

As played by James Spader, Joel is an infinitely likeable guy. There simply isn't much "there" there. Indeed, most of his character traits are Screenwriting 101 choices. His pain skims the surface, rather than pervades his soul. Haunted by memories of tracking serial killer David Allen Griffin (Keanu Reeves) in Los Angeles and of how this culminated in an intense personal loss, Joel has fled to Chicago to escape the horror, only to learn that Griffin has followed him. One of the many intriguing but poorly executed elements of the film is the inter-dependence of these two characters. As Polly points out, Griffin obviously missed Joel and, in his own perverse way, Joel hasn't seemed complete without Griffin in his life. And, when Griffin talks to Joel, he even confesses that he tried to "make it work" with Joel's L.A. replacement, but "we just didn't see eye to eye."

When Joel starts to receive photos of Griffin's victims, he manages -- in true "I'm going through a character change" fashion -- to get his act together and return to the FBI. He wants to take Griffin down once and for all. Here again, the writers introduce a fascinating idea that doesn't get enough focus. That being that, in today's world, no one ever really "sees" each other. That in our busy world we can pass a killer on a street without even knowing it. Yet, this idea too gets lost in the predictable game of cat-and-mouse between hero and villain.

Eventually, the chase culminates in a groaner of a climax where Joel actually thanks Griffin for coming into his life. A more erudite writer might have been able to pull off this scene -- a meeting of the minds between two men on the edge -- but scribes Elliot and Ayers don't have the chops for it. They shy away from intellect and play the "action" angle. It doesn't help of course that Spader is dealing with Keanu Reeves, whose happy-go-lucky, surfer dude portrayal vacillates between being eerily and effectively discomforting to being simply bad acting.

One of the few really bright spots in the film is the inclusion of charmingly satirical police detective Hollis (Chris Ellis), who manages to pull off lines like "Goodness gracious, nothing like a serial killer to start off the holiday season" with aplomb. It's so refreshing to see a cop who doesn't resent the FBI, who actually cooperates with their efforts to find a brutal killer. (Give a few brownie points to the writers.) As a result, Hollis's scenes are some of the high points in the film. It's a shame he gets forgotten as the movie rolls on.

Much of the blame herein must go to music video director Joe Charbanic, who will likely get the majority of the flack for his neophyte direction of The Watcher. Some music video directors like Bryan Singer and David Fincher make the transition to film and some simply don't. Charbanic falls in the latter category. Too often, he resorts to "serial killer cam" -- various film stocks, negative images and jump cuts -- that get us into the minds of both Griffin and Joel or help reveal Joel's dark past. (Just say "No" to Flashbacks.) Even with help from veteran cinematographer Michael Chapman of Raging Bull and Taxi Driver fame, the visuals in the film are jarringly awkward, instead -- as was probably intended -- of being impressively stylized. And Charbanic's obsession with often-grating musical interludes, while helping the pace, only further intrudes on the storytelling.

This attempt at stylized filmmaking is the film's ultimate undoing. Forget the weird film stock and the jump cuts -- just tell a story. Had Charbanic and the writers just stayed with the characters and the film's original themes of isolation and co-dependence, The Watcher might have offered up something more than a hackneyed plot line driven by gimmicks. In other words, The Watcher might have offered something that was really worth watching.