Untraceable
Short description
Jennifer Marsh is a special agent with an FBI unit in Portland that investigates crimes committed online. Alongside her colleague Griffin Dowd, she spends her days tracking fraudsters and others who use the internet for criminal ends. That routine is broken by a website called killwithme.com, where a killer streams footage of victims being tortured. The site cannot be traced or shut down, and its audience effectively takes part in each death: the more visitors who watch, the sooner the victim dies. As the case develops, the pursuit becomes personal for Marsh, who is raising a young daughter, and the investigation turns into a race against a technologically skilled adversary.
The film was directed by Gregory Hoblit, its sixth feature after Primal Fear, Fallen, Frequency, Hart's War and Fracture. Diane Lane heads the cast as Marsh, with Billy Burke as Eric Box, Colin Hanks as Griffin Dowd, Joseph Cross as Owen Reilly and Mary Beth Hurt as Stella Marsh. Robert Fyvolent, Mark Brinker and Allison Burnett wrote the screenplay, and it was produced by Tom Rosenberg, Gary Lucchesi and Richard S. Wright.
Made for a budget of 35 million dollars, it took about 53 million dollars worldwide. On IMDb it holds a rating of 6.2 from roughly a thousand votes, while the critics' score stands lower, at 4.3 from 147 reviews, a gap suggesting that viewers responded to the premise more readily than reviewers did.
What's left behind the scenes
- The website used by the killer (www.killwithme.com) actually existed. It was created by the studio for promotional purposes for the film.
- The news anchors from Portland – Marilyn Deutsch, Pete Ferryman, David Freitas, Jim Hyde, Kimberly Maus, and Kerry Tomlinson – played themselves in the film.
- Diane Lane's character settles into room 237 at a hotel. The same room features in Stanley Kubrick's horror film *The Shining* (1980), based on the novel of the same name (1977) by Stephen King.
- The rifles shown in the film are airsoft replicas purchased from an airsoft equipment store.
- Some of the police officers featured in the film actually served in the Portland Police Bureau. Other roles, such as forensic experts or FBI agents, were also played by actual forensic experts and FBI agents. The film's director, Gregory Hoblit, wanted to achieve the highest possible level of authenticity so that the depictions would not seem blatantly foolish or ridiculous to real professionals.
- The police officer named West A. Helfrich was played by West A. Helfrich himself, who is a real-life police officer. He was initially brought onto the film as a consultant for the scene where a webcam is installed on a car near the house of the character played by Diane Lane, but he ended up replacing an actor in one of the supporting roles. He tried performing the scene, and for the sake of authenticity, he was allowed to improvise his lines. It was also his idea to show his character's reaction to the smell coming from the car's trunk.
- While preparing for her role, Diane Lane completed an FBI training course.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
