Along Came A Spider

It's a classic case of one wrong twist spoiling a great show. Along Came TheSpider is the kind of movie one would go to with a thinking friend. It starts with acliché—a wise cop (Morgan Freeman) loses his partner and then spends months broodingover the tragedy. It then develops into an extraordinary plot—a trustedschool-teacher kidnaps a senator's daughter and Freeman, who's not involved inthe case, gets a call and the kidnapper leaves clues, as part, apparently, of a convolutedgame. Freeman cracks the codes to discover a criminal whose motive is not money orthrills, but an intellectual recognition of his talents.

Monica Potter, failed secret service agent, joins Freeman in the hunt. The mindgameleads to the possibility of another startling kidnap. Freeman finally gets a moreconventional call—a ransom demand. Suspicious about the sudden turn in thekidnapper's mind, he keeps the ransom date. His doubts, however, are confirmed whenthe criminal turns up at his door with a harassed, defeated look—it turns out that hewas not the one who made the ransom demand. Someone else re-kidnapped the girl andimpersonated him.

Director Lee Tamahori maintains the kind of quiet, edgy pace required for anintellectual thriller till this point. Freeman brings a sober steeliness to his role. Thevictim's profile, as well as the setting of her school from where she gets picked up,are all designed to substantiate and accentuate the workings of the scholarly mystery.There is seldom a moment which distracts from the ongoing dodgy sport. JerryGoldsmith's background score also brings back the almost-lost tradition of theunobtrusive music highlighting more the attitude of the theme. Then the film suddenlybecomes predictable—while seeming to throw an entirely unexpected loop. The'preciseness' with which this happens, and the way the film's mood changesin minutes as the identity of the 'stalkers who stalked the stalker' comes out,creates a shock of its own. The cutting edge goes for a six, replaced by the banalmonotony of a Hollywood B. This is one movie which you wish was longer. The finalrevelations needed time to register—since the thrill lay in the mindgame, the endsurprise ought to have emerged as part of another long-drawn duel. Films like Chinatown,which pioneered the intellectual thriller, knew how to sustain the unusual—they nevermade the cardinal mistake of inserting the cloak & dagger stuff at the wrong point. Aswitnessed in other movies like Proof of Life, Hollywood seems to be falling inthe rut of forcing safe endings on complex story lines.