A smart thriller with one of the more satisfying wrap-ups in some time, “Untraceable” begins easily enough as widowed single mother Jennifer Marsh (Diane Lane) ends her night shift as a cybersnoop at the FBI’s Portland, Ore., bureau.
Jennifer arrives at her modest home to bring her young daughter Annie (Perla Haney-Jardine) to grade school.
But this won’t be a normal week. Soon Jennifer and her younger partner, Griffith Dowd (Colin Hanks, “King Kong”), find themselves chasing not the usual sexual predators or identity thieves but a disturbedsadist whose untraceable Web site, killwithme.com, offers a live streaming videocast of a public execution.
The site’s gimmick, boldly proclaimed in its name, is that the more viewers who enter, the faster the death of the first victim, a kitten.
Things rapidly get homicidal as people are kidnapped and suffer grisly deaths in real time online.
The first bare-chested victim has “Kill With Me” etched on his flesh while given a transfusion of blood thinner. As the site’s hits increase to the millions, thinner is pumped more quickly and the seeping wounds hemorrhage.
The two agents are soon joined by the police, led by Billy Burke’s stoic detective.
Lane, sensational when playing such passionate women as her Oscar-nominated adulteress in “Unfaithful,” the love-starved expat in “Under the Tuscan Sun” or the boozy hellion of “Hollywoodland,” here maintains a briskly businesslike composure. Until everything gets a bit personal. And scary.
Hanks is ideally cast as her opposite, a happy-go-lucky guy looking for love who doesn’t bring the job home.
Burke, low-key and coolly masculine, was memorable as a similarly committed but not as smart cop in “Fracture” with Anthony Hopkins. One refreshing touch: Agent and detective never succumb to the almostinevitable romantic cliches.
Even as “Untraceable” ratchets into a suspenseful example of such torturetainment as “Saw” or “Hostel,” it comments on the desensitization and cozy anonymity of the Internet that makes viewers partner to such heinous sights.
(“Untraceable” has graphic scenes of torture and killing.)
Rated R. At AMC Loews Boston Common, Regal Fenway Stadium and suburban theaters.
