The Bone Collector

The Bone Collector is Australian director Phillip Noyce's latest film following Dead Calm, Sliver, Clear And Present Danger and Patriot Games.

Noyce appears to have become adept at playing the Hollywood game, a skill for which he surely should be admired.

It must be murder sometimes weighing the wishes of the accountants and bankrollers who run Tinsel Town, let alone the actors and writers.

But the rules are simple really. Fit the mould, balance the books, make a few (million) dollars for the investors and you'll get to make another film.

I heard an interview with Noyce the other day. He with others has been trying for years to film The Quiet American, Graham Green's excellent Vietnam novel.

The problem is, as Noyce said, "the bad guy's American." Difficult politics!

The Bone Collector goes resolutely by the numbers. This is a carefully constructed mainstream film designed to please as many of the general population as possible.

The step by step opening scenes signal its essential banality, but to Phillip Noyce's credit the film survives. It's quite entertaining.

The Bone Collector has elements of Copycat and Silence Of The Lambs, not to mention Rear Window, but a Rear Window in the shape of a computer screen.

The always good Denzel Washington plays Lincoln Rhyme who was a crash hot New York forensic detective before his back was broken when he was crushed by a falling beam. There's a rather neat plot element.

He's now a quadriplegic with only the use of his head, his shoulders and, rather remarkably I would have thought, his right index finger. Useful for clicking on a computer mouse.

This hasn't cramped his style as much as it could have. By some miracle he sits up in his special bed with a zillion dollars worth of computer equipment in one of those immense apartments in which nearly all Hollywood film characters live in New York.

A serial killer begins to butcher victims and Lincoln sends out police rookie Amelia (the big lipped Angelina Jolie) to be his eyes and legs.

There are plenty of conventions to follow if you make one of these films. The Silence Of The Lambs set the pace.

Gore is pretty standard. These serial killers sure like to have their victims suffer. And they like to work in the dark. This gives the film maker plenty of scope for having characters sidling along, torch and gun out, with rats and other squirmy things about to fall upon them.

There will be two or three sudden belts of sound to make the audience jump and it's standard for the killer to want to knock off the cop who's on the chase. But what if said killer only has to knock the cop off his bed?

How can that be made into a fair fight? Mmm. There's a challenge for a film maker.

Phil Noyce and the team handled this fairly well and they even let a dullard like me pick the identity of the killer's identity. For that I remain grateful.

And I suppose I'm sort of grateful for the following as well. It seems that it is admissible in a film like this for a black man to have a relationship with a pink/white woman. Perhaps though only if he's crippled.

But with all of this The Bone Collector, with all of its predictability, moves along smartly as an effective 90's thriller.