Herald rating: * * *
Running time: 108 mins
Rental: Now
Review: Ewan McDonald
Looks good but you wonder: is anything really happening inside there? No, no, we're talking about the movie, not the star.
Jennifer Lopez plays Catherine Deane, a social worker who can establish rapport with troubled clients, who is recruited for a
project using experimental technology to link her mind with a millionaire's son in a coma. Can she draw him out?
In a parallel story, the FBI finds the body of the latest victim of a serial killer. Vince Vaughn plays an agent named Novak, who believes the killer has a ritual he goes through — which means his latest victim has only hours to live before a clockwork mechanism kills her.
The FBI catches the killer, Carl Stargher, (Vincent D'Onofrio) and asks Catherine to get him to reveal where his prisoner is. Her colleagues warn that she risks psychological harm (yes, really) by going on a voyage into Stargher's subconscious (I don't make this up, I only report it).
First-time director Tarsem, an Indian who dropped his surname, came to the movies from music videos and ads, and it shows. The Cell looks like a never-ending commercial, though others have praised it as challenging, wildly ambitious and technically superb. They may be the people who said that about J. Lo's last album, too.
