The Bone Collector

The Bone Collector is yet another horror-thriller about the search for a serial killer in New York. There are the perfunctory gross-out shots of victims who have been murdered by a cab driver, but those scenes mask the basic problem of this film: the puny script is nothing but skin and bones.

The Bone Collector features an unusual twist. Denzel Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme, a disabled NYPD criminologist living in Manhattan. Four years before, Rhyme became a quadriplegic in an accident. Now he lies in bed, able to move only his index finger to click the mouse of an elaborate computer system.

A runaway cabby kidnaps a wealthy couple. The husband gets murdered and buried in gravel along the railroad tracks. Only the hand is seen, bearing his wife’s wedding ring. Whoever this ski-masked serial killer is, he leaves behind small clues for Rhyme to analyze on his cool computer. As it turns out, the wife gets a lethal steambath courtesy of the New York sewer system. Several other victims suffer grizzly deaths for the audience to see. Yecch!

Rhyme recruits babe New York cop Amelia Donaghy (Angelina Jolie) to assist him in tracking down the killer. Adding nothing to the movie but angst for the audience, Captain Howard Cheney (Michael Rooker), the consummate gumshoe, plays politics to obstruct the investigation.

The audience begins to realize that their strings are being yanked with one contrivance after another. I began to think of Jimmy Stewart in Rear Window and his fateful confrontation with murderer Raymond Burr. Sure enough, Denzel Washington has his horizontal standoff with the killer, who seems to come in from out of the blue. Any bets on who emerges as the winner? Don’t waste your time finding out. The Bone Collector belongs in the boneyard.