Along Came a Spider (2001)
Directed by Lee Tamahori
After the harrowing death of his partner, forensic psychologist and best-selling author Alex Cross cannot forgive himself and has retreated to the peace of retirement. But when a brilliant criminal kidnaps a senator's young daughter, he is lured back into action as the kidnapper wants to deal with Alex personally. Teamed with Jezzie Flanigan, the Secret Service agent assigned to protect the missing girl, Alex follows a serpentine trail of clues that leads him to a stunning discovery - the kidnapper wants more than just ransom.
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What critics compared Along Came a Spider to
It’s a carbon copy of a sequence in Ransom (among other films), and it leads to a loot drop-off clearly stolen from Kurosawa’s High and Low.
He’s trying to do “Zodiac” while they’re doing “Along Came a Spider.”
A bullet and a key come into play later, after Adam finds, and decides to spare Laurence from, a photo of Alison Gordon (Monica Potter, "Along Came a Spider") and daughter Diana (Makenzie Vega, "Made") bound and gagged.
But it's directed by Lee Tamahori, who apparently ignores loopholes and beats clichés to death for a living (see "The Edge," "Mulholland Falls" ).
(In Mulholland Falls and, to a lesser extent, The Edge, Tamahori's instinct for emotional sinew was obscured by the seduction of studio fat.)
While the direction of Lee Tamahori ("Mulholland Falls," "The Edge") is not consistently terrific -- there are a few fuzzy moments -- the movie basically works as a puzzle: indeed, it's the only Hollywood thriller in years with an ending that took me completely by surprise.
To be fair, the novice screenwriter hasn't acted alone in his crime of repetitiveness as much of his plot follows Patterson's original story and director Lee Tamahori ("The Edge," "Mulholland Falls") doesn't stray far from the formula in shooting Moss' script.
Tamahori followed his New Zealand debut, "Once Were Warriors," with thrillers "Mulholland Falls" and "The Edge" and some episodes of "The Sopranos," and, aided by cinematographer Matthew F. Leonetti and top editor Neil Travis, he is not shy about moving the convoluted plot along.