ALONG CAME A SPIDER - SQUASHED

Along Came a Spider is a film I would place in the “skip it” category, and
certainly no higher than the “just misses” category. The film is
cliche-ridden, driven by formula, and often just plain stupid, but the
acting performances keep things fairly interesting, in a hit and miss kind
of way.

I found myself caught up in the story at times. But more often, the story
was like a spider that I wanted to reach out and squash.

Based upon one of James Patterson’s best-selling Alex Cross novels, the
series from which Kiss the Girls originated, the film tells the story of
Cross (Morgan Freeman), a police detective and psychologist who must use his
formidable investigative skills in an attempt to locate a young kidnap
victim and her abductor.

Cross’s adversary is Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott), a man who has left a
tangled web of clues for Cross to follow. Soneji hopes to make a name for
himself as one of the great criminal minds of our time. (Beyond this, his
precise motivations are never effectively explained.)

Cross teams with a novice Secret Service Agent, Jezzie Flannigan (Monica
Potter), to investigate the crime, and they make a pretty effective “buddy”
team. Progress is made, and our crime fighters get closer and closer to the
truth.

Meanwhile, we are constantly reminded that time is of the essence. But the
film never puts its money where its mouth is on this point. It fails to
sustain any measurable dramatic tension, to the extent that it ever creates
any tension at all.

Midway through the film, the plot suddenly changes direction, leaving
several holes and resulting in a response that goes something like this:
“Huh?”

I had several questions I would have liked to ask: Can a State police
detective and a Secret Service agent simply decide to become partners on
their own? Who did the background hiring check on Soneji? Shouldn’t they
have at least warned Dimitri’s protectors that Soneji would try to make
contact? How did Cross happen to be in the right place where that phone
would ring? Surely he’s not going to be able to guess the password, is he?

Morgan Freeman, Monica Potter, and director Lee Tamahori manage to rescue
this film to a certain extent, and there is one decent surprise along the
way. But even Miss Muffet was frightened away when she saw a spider coming.

This film is rated R for violence and language.

Rating C © 2001. Jim Chastain II