The bone collector

Year of release : 1999

Run time : 1h58m

Genre : Thriller / Crime

Cast : Angelina Jolie, Denzel Washington, Queen Latifah, Michael Rooker, Luis Guzman, Ed O’Neill

The movie is based on the 1997 Jeffery Deaver crime novel of the same name.

The movie opens with forensics expert Lincoln Rhyme’s nightmare, of how he became a quadriplegic.

After, we see a rich couple who are waiting for their driver at the airport, and get a taxi. Unluckily for them, the taxi driver takes them to the opposite part of the city.

Lincoln asked his doctor friend, Barry, to end his life, as he can’t live bed ridden anymore, being only able to move one finger and the shoulders. He has dysreflexia seizures which intensify in frequency, and he knows it’s only a matter of time until the seizure which will make him a vegetable. Barry finally agrees to do it after he comes back from his business trip, on Sunday.

Amelia is a patrol officer, who can’t commit to her boyfriend, and is transferring to the Youth Services at work. On one of her last days as a patrol officer, she answers a call about a kid who found something by the tracks. She finds the body of the man who took the cab with his wife,earlier. He is buried in the railroad bed with one hand out, a finger missing, with his wife’s wedding ring on it.

Amelia signals the incoming train to stop, and asks the kid to buy her a cheap cardboard camera to take pictures of the crime scene before they are being tampered with.

Captain Cheney thinks what she did is stupid, scolding her for it, but this man has no business being in the police force to begin with!

Detective Sellitto comes to see Lincoln, asking him to help him with the case, but Lincoln thinks it’s a ransom case. He leaves him the file, as he has a seizure while they are there, and when he wakes up, he looks over it.

When detective Sellitto comes back with Amelia, Lincoln tells them the crime scene was staged, and the k1ller is trying to tell them something. That the wife is alive, and the k1ller is gonna k1ll her at 4 o’clock.

Lincoln wants Amelia on his team on the case, as he thinks she has a natural eye for details, but she doesn’t want to, as she’s been waiting for a year to join the Youth Services.

Based on the clues the k1ller left at the crime scene, Lincoln finds out where the k1ller took the wife, to k1ll her. Unluckily they get to her too late.

Lincoln is asking Amelia to enter the crime scene alone, and tell him what she sees.

The k1ller left more clues as to where his next crime will be.

The more they research, the more they find, and Lincoln realizes the k1ller has been active for a year, copying the k1llings from a book,”The bone collector”, but captain Cheney was too dumb to put it together, while he’s trying to take the case from them now, not allowing them to do their work and find the victims.

 

I personally enjoyed the movie, it’s a good, atmospheric movie, which makes you think.

Amelia is dealing with some childhood trauma, as she found her father, who was a cop, after he k1lled himself, and is afraid she’s gonna end up like him.

Lincoln seems to find a purpose while working on the case, and lose his will to d1e. I liked the friendship between him and detective Sellitto, and his nurse Thelma, and then Amelia.

Detective Cheney was ridiculous and beyond annoying !

The k1ller’s reasons for doing what he did were insane, but then again, one has to be insane to do what he did!

I liked the places where they filmed, and the colors of the movie. I noticed the movies of the era have a certain charm, as the buildings were beautiful inside and out due to the architecture.

The acting was good.

Bobby Cannavale has a small role, as Angelina’s boyfriend, and appears at the beginning of the movie.

The soundtrack was good.

The visual effects were good.

The ratings are in the lower 60% from the critics and the audiences on both Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.

Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a B+.

The movie grossed 151.5 million dollars at the box office, against a 48 million dollars budget.

The script was written with Al Pacino in mind but he was not available. Harrison Ford and Sean Connery were considered before Denzel was cast.

Nicole Kidman and Demi Moore were considered before the role went to Angelina.

You can watch the full movie for free on the Ok.Ru platform.

Rating : Worth a watch !