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It is a film noir and comes under the genre of horror and murderer chasing. As a feature of the genre, a highly restricted narrative is adopted. Though "mindhunters", as introduced by the story preview of the film distributor, are FBI agents who work on psychology to predate the criminals, the film neither focuses on forensic science nor sufficiently exploits psychological analyses in finding the murderer. The reasoning and synthesis from psychological perspectives are apparently shallow. Some narrative elements (e.g., proximity of the murder, torture) resemble "The Bone Collector" (Dir: Phillip Noyce, 1999) but the frame of the diegesis and other story details are substantially different.

The establishment of 8 FBI agents and the announced murders of each of them in the narrative build up a perpetuating sequence of tension and suspense, which effectively instil the brain working exercise of the spectator in 3 issues: (1) Who will be the next victim? (2) How will he/she die? (3) Who will be the survivor(s)? Together with the confinement of the story into a single locale (an isolated island), these questions create sustainable tension and suspense throughout the film. This device of multiple victims in a sequential order produces a similar effect of prolonged tension on the spectator as it does in "Collateral" (Dir: Michael Mann, 2004). This sustainability also rests on the intensive use of recurrent motifs of time (narrative), deadlines (narrative), deaths (narrative) and watches (visual).

Although the story is far from realism (absolutely impossible in the real world), the thematic elements of distrust, antagonism and hostilities among individuals are far more convincing and realistic than its narrative. The friendly chatting scenes of the FBI agents in the pub at the beginning are contrasted with the pistol-pointing and deadly fighting sequences in the latter part of the film. The last one thirds of the film hastens the viewer's hypothesis forming exercise by, under the highly restricted narrative, repeatedly misleading the viewer as to who the real murder is. Most spectacularly, this device effectively spreads the distrust onto the part of the viewer instead of merely positioning the viewers as onlookers.

The film has a double climax that creates a little surprise before the denouement. Yet the actual murders as revealed by the murderer in the flashbacks do not completely fill all gaps in the story. This product from director Renny Harlin is just an average piece of work, however. With a fairly high degree of violence, it is visually entertaining, solid in thematic connotation but weak in narrative.

註：本評論純屬影評作者個人意見，並不代表本網立場。
Note: This views presented in this review is solely the views of the critic who wrote it and do not represent the stance of our website.

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