BEFORE: Happy (??) Inauguration Day - I decided to celebrate by buying myself a new pair of sneakers and a new iMac. I hate to participate in stimulating the economy under this new President, but I've got to get my computer and my phone communicating again. I made the mistake of upgrading my phone just before Christmas, and after that, it couldn't be recognized by either my home computer or my computer at work. Or course, two months after starting the project of replacing my audio cassettes with digital files and getting more music on my phone, I got totally derailed. At least this new iMac should connect to the new phone system and I can move forward.
Brad Pitt carries over from "Seven Years in Tibet" and he'll be around for two more movies after this one.
THE PLOT: A journalist duo go on a tour of serial killer murder sites with two companions, unaware that one of them is a serial killer himself.
AFTER: A writer and his photographer girlfriend post an ad for someone to carpool with them to murder sites - what could POSSIBLY go wrong? I mean, people who have fascinations with serial killers are all perfectly normal people, right? The chance of encountering unbalanced people in that scenario must be really, really low, for sure...
Haven't I seen this before? When it was called "Natural Born Killers"? OK, I guess there are some differences, but both films have Juliette Lewis in them. And in that Oliver Stone film she seems to be really into the killing part of the couple's journey, and here's she's blissfully ignorant about it, to the point of being functionally retarded.
The casting is very blatant - you can see the theory that by casting the most deadpan actor and actress of all time to be the "norms", it therefore makes the serial killer and his clueless girlfriend that much more vibrant. In theory, anyway.
The whole point of the trip is to gain some psychological insight into the minds of serial killers, but I just don't see how one can get that from visiting the murder sites. I mean, what information do you gain from being in a place where a murder took place? You know someone probably cleaned the place up, right? The researcher decides to play audio tapes (which he conveniently somehow has) that were recorded at the time, just to enhance each scene. Right, because we know for sure that every serial killer records all of his killings on audio tape, just for posterity.
This road trip is just a bad idea all around. I can think of a hundred better road trips to take, like stopping at every barbecue restaurant between the Carolinas and Texas, passing through Memphis and Kansas City for good measure. Or trying every diner on Route 66 - let's face it, most of my road trip ideas are food-based, not serial-killing based.
Also starring David Duchovny (last seen in "Return to Me"), Michelle Forbes, Juliette Lewis (last seen in "August: Osage County"), Judson Vaughn (last seen in "Robocop 3"), Brett Rice, Mars Callahan (last seen "That Thing You Do!"), Loanne Bishop.
RATING: 4 out of 10 gas station restrooms
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