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Most read Comments 1 CROYDON: Officer attacked by mob says he feared for his life 2 Kingston College pupil stabbed to death 3 BROMLEY: Sheep sex suspect barred from farmyards 4 Win Disney/Pixar WALL•E game for Wii 5 BROMLEY: Man held over alleged sheep sex 6 WANDSWORTH: 'Caring, vibrant and colourful' man dies after hit-and-run 7 Killer's sentence won't stop knives: mum 8 Police attacked in rubbish row 9 Win tickets for Dirty Dancing 10 WANDSWORTH: Gay police couple 'stashed child porn under their bed' Today | 7 Days 1 Update: Boy murdered in gang attack 2 'UFOs' spotted in Cheam 3 London's most dangerous streets revealed 4 Johnson calls for ‘common sense’ to improve quality of life for Londoners 5 Expert warns of baby deaths linked to incinerators 6 Killer ladybirds in the capital 7 SUTTON: 85 OAP villagers to be evicted 8 WANDSWORTH: Huntington's disease leads to restaurant ban 9 Replica guns seized from collector 10 Painting a gum trail

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Star rating: ***
Dir: Gregory Hoblit
With: Diane Lane, Billy Burke, Colin Hanks

Watch the trailer here

No trouble in tracing the origins of this copycat serial killer chiller. Untraceable combines the noirish gloomy atmosphere and glum police investigation of a series of horrific homicides made popular by Se7en with the ingenious designs for death and torture porn-style execution of the victims from the Saw series. This particular killer's modus operandi - live web-streaming of the slow and excruciating deaths, directly involving the internet-browsing public in their outcome - has also been seen before in the online snuff movie thriller My Little Eye. Those familiar with this genre ought not to have much difficulty defining the murderer's motivation, particularly as the identity of the sick individual is revealed relatively early on in the proceedings.

Still, for all Untraceable's lack of originality it remains a slickly made movie. Gregory Hoblit (who cut his teeth on TV's NYPD Blue before making his film debut with the courtroom thriller Primal Fear) makes good atmospheric use of the wet, autumnal Portland, Oregon setting, and he keeps the plot rattling along nicely.

And in Diane Lane, playing the FBI cyber detective heading the investigation, Untraceable has a reasonably compelling lead - even if we've already seen Charlize Theron and Ashley Judd playing just this kind of plucky female protagonist on numerous occasions.

12:01am Thursday 28th February 2008

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