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The
Cell
(2000)
 ''The
Cell'' spends most of its time trying to live up to its
dazzling visuals. It never quite does, although it and
Jennifer Lopez are quite an eyeful. The film boasts grand,
dark, surreal landscapes of the imagination, while Lopez
revels in more costume changes than any other therapist in
recent film history as she journeys into the minds of
traumatized and comatose subjects. ''The Cell,'' making a bid
to enter the unsettling territory of ''Silence of the Lambs''
and ''Seven'' as Lopez takes on a serial killer who gruesomely
mutilates his victims and fetishizes them after murdering
them, is one of the rare films in this creepy genre that
places an empowered woman at its center - alongside an
all-too-depressingly familiar disempowered female victim.
Even
though many of the film's images will prove more than some
viewers can take, the film never really endangers Lopez's
character because we're clear on the fact that what we're
seeing is taking place in someone's mind while the therapist
and the killer both lie suspended from wires in a sterile
room, the cell of the title. Unconscious, they're connected to
a mind-travel device. The film loses little time sweeping us
into its virtual reality arena as we first see a sweeping
desert vista, with Lopez striding in a long, white feathered
gown along the ridge of giant sand dune until she reaches a
figure who turns out to be a troubled boy. Lopez's
character, Catherine Deane, is diverted off the boy's case
after Vince Vaughn's FBI agent barges into the place with the
unconscious body of Vincent D'Onofrio's captured serial
killer. They need to get inside the killer's mind fast, the
FBI man explains, because a woman he recently kidnapped is
being confined in a tank that will fill with water when a
timing device is triggered, drowning her unless they can
determine its location. That's the source of the suspense.
Never soft-pedaling the killer's butchery, ''The Cell'' then
has Catherine climb into her maroon pleated form-fitting body
suit, and pick her way through his multiple personalities as
she plunges into the dark dungeon of his mind.
While the film rides a
succession of opulently macabre visuals of a strikingly lurid
splendor, to say nothing of D'Onofrio's versatility as the
tormented tormentor, its real chance-taking lies in its
decision to present the perpetrator of such nightmarish
butchery sympathetically, as Lopez's mind-traveler makes
contact with the killer's inner child, in this case a
sensitive boy viciously abused by a monstrous father. Not that
learning the genesis of the twisted rituals that accompany the
killings makes them any easier to take. The abuses heaped upon
the boy will further test audience tolerance levels and ensure
that ''The Cell'' doesn't merely settle for video game
territory.
Ultimately, though, ''The
Cell'' does seem directed more to the eye than any other vital
center. Huge, dark, slimy stone staircases, rooms decked out
with torture instruments set against billowing draperies, and
grisly episodes, including one that involves evisceration in
the style of a painting depicting a martyr, vie for visual
primacy with Lopez's striking costumes. These range from the
Asian royalty look in embroidered silk to the saintly Madonna
mode as Catherine attempts to go back inside the catatonic
killer's fevered cranium and save the terrorized little boy
who grew up acting out his rage and confusion.
Lopez was brainier and sexier
in ''Out of Sight,'' but she won't go unnoticed here, even
when she's only being used as part of the lavish decor, which
is most of the time.
Vaughn's FBI man represents his
most comfortable performance since ''Swingers,'' and erstwhile
video director Tarsem Singh's cell phone will be buzzing with
offers both virtual and real as ''The Cell'' gets out into the
marketplace. His film isn't as wild at heart as his savagely
theatrical visuals, but they'll do a lot to persuade you that
you're spending time in the ed. ''The Cell'' is a film that
knows how to cover its hallucinatory bases. |
