Herald Rating: * *
Running time: 118 mins
In stores: Today
Review: Ewan McDonald
Lincoln Rhyme (Denzel Washington) is a gold-plated hero. He's the cop who wrote the book (a dozen of 'em, actually) on forensics at crime scenes.
Unfortunately a beam fell on him when he was researching No 13 and he's now
paralysed, lying in a computer-controlled bed in the sort of Manhattan apartment that only a cop with a huge ACC payout could afford.
Below his neck, only one finger has any feeling. He has a live-in nurse, Thelma (Queen Latifah).
One day a young cop, Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) trips over a gruesome murder where the killer has left so many clues that only an expert with time on his hands could figure out.
It's the latest in a chain of grisly serial killings and the cops can't send for Rhyme so the entire force, their desks and computers, move into his apartment.
He does the thinking, Amelia does the stalking, stumbling and fleeing from every plot device known to Hollywood, including going into abandoned factories and underground traps with only a torch for protection, on her own, as every young cop does when on the trail of a mass murderer, and outwitting the superior officer who, having seen a lot of movies himself, knows he's supposed to have her put out of the way.
In the end it's not so much a whodunnit, more of a "who cares?"
