Painful to Watch

In this flimsy would-be shocker, Keanu Reeves poses stoically as Griffin, a Los Angeles serial killer notorious for "watching" his victims-to-be; such tacit voyeurism has earned him the chilling sobriquet "The Watcher," which sounds better than more accurate epithets like "The Gawker" or "The Ogler." Surveying one's marks doesn't seem too exceptional a quirk for a mass murderer, but I suppose it distinguishes Griffin from those maniacs who cast about for their prey with their eyes closed.

The atypical casting of Reeves constitutes The Watcher's most (and only) innovative stroke. If the former Ted doesn't quite craft a latter-day Hannibal Lecter, he does improve on his last bid for villainy in Kenneth Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing, which entrusted Reeves with far too much dialogue. Watcher director Joe Charbanic, who has helmed music videos for Reeves' band Dogstar, at least knows enough to keep his star pretty and pretty quiet-hence, multiple shots of Keanu gazing with sinister blankness from beneath that perpetually furrowed brow, lips closed benignly in the knowledge that no lines need be delivered.

As the film begins, Griffin's reign of terror has finally impelled from LA his damp, twitchy, neurotic FBI nemesis Campbell (played by James Spader, the very embodiment of damp and twitchy neurosis). The detective relocates to Chicago, where he spends most of his waking hours sprawled on the couch of Dr. Polly (Marisa Tomei). You have to wonder about movie psychologists who counsel law enforcement officers: don't they know they're marked for either death or extreme duress? Hasn't Polly seen Basic Instinct? Then again, Campbell's shrink fails to realize she's in a movie in the first place; this explains why she can deliver lines like "Confront your past!" without grimacing.

Confront his past Campbell must, though, when a rash of local murders announces Griffin's arrival in the Windy City. As the familiar cat-and-mouse machinery groans to sputtering life, Charbanic foists numerous stalker scenes upon the audience. We watch half-bemused as Griffin, heart on his sleeve and garrotte in his fist, watches women watching him watching them in electronics stores and across courtyards. Between slayings, our sleekly-coiffed antagonist baits Campbell with photographs of his scheduled victims; with each fresh torment, Campbell summons what appears to be the National Guard... only to let the wily villain slip through his trembling fingers. This happens more than once. More than twice. More than is necessary, in fact.

The movie's a dim little assemblage of recycled material, from its prefab suspense scenarios to the ludicrous, candle-bedecked climax in an abandoned warehouse which, we suspect, Griffin co-ops with the sickos from The Bone Collector and Kiss the Girls. The actors endow their roles with what depth they can, but Charbanic's workmanlike direction, which emphasizes minimalist style over minimalized substance, impedes the cast's efforts.

Reeves' malignant presence aside, we can discern another, more latent novelty in The Watcher, one which the film studiously underplays: there's a finely-limned homoerotic co-dependency simmering between Griffin, who slays women in order to attract the attentions of a single man and Campbell, desperate to identify the dark yin to his yang. (Would that I could claim credit for the analogy, but just-add-water screenwriters Darcy Meyers, David Elliot, and Clay Ayers beat me to the punch.) However, by the time the two meet, we just don't want to watch.