Mindhunters (2005)

Admirable film.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Very good movie overall, highly recommended. Most of the negative reviews don't have any merit and are all pollitically based. Give this movie a chance at least, and it might give you a different perspective.

This movie is about a bunch of FBI wannabe profilers who get dumped on an island and left to solve a simulated case when they start getting bumped off for real.From the very first killing to the last these FBI wannabes are utterly clueless and incompetent. It's like watching Police Academy: The horror years or something. Some of the methods for killing off the agents are more inventive than in saw and, of course, just as likely to totally fail because they are over engineered. In fact, treating it as a comedy made for a better movie than treating it as a serious thriller.

Director Renny Harlin is very much a paracinematic man, and his particular brand of style fits perfectly in the early 2000s aesthetic of excess. High concept thrillers such as Speed rely on an exponentially thrilling pace. Moving the plot along faster than the viewer brain can comprehend the inherent silliness of the core concept.Since Fincher's Se7en, thrillers have taken the macabre turn in the crime genre. Reaching the point of Wan's Saw set within one of those trials of torture. Mindhunters similarly attempts the same zenith, upping Se7en's police duo with a ragtag team of FBI agents, racing to solve an ongoing test of intelligence and insanity. Despite the blatant exposition and character development, none of these people seem smarter than Pitt's hardheaded detective.The agents muster a fun mix of "oh, they've come a long way since" and "oh... who?" Notable entertainers here are Johnny Lee Miller sporting his best Blanche DuBois, Christian Slater and Val Kilmer competing in their natural friendly-yet-suspicious-yet-bored acting styles, and LL Cool J acting as if he was John McClane in yet another preposterous scenario.Attempting to outdo predecessors with 'bigger is better', the story takes place on an isolated island complete with an entire city simulation for a training exercise. According to their teacher, representative of "the mind of a sociopath", presumably not meaning laughably inane and ridiculously convenient for the killer's grand scheme. The film, of course, never slows down to let you question how the entire plot hinges of this arbitrary setting.The script of Mindhunters is definitely where entertainment hinges on as Harlin desperately races ahead of logic and common sense. For such a complex and convoluted mystery build, there are a remarkable number of legitimate plant and pay-offs. Many of them are obvious enough to predict despite the suspension of disbelief being thoroughly tested. Much how Jigsaw relies on sheer chance amidst his philosophical soliloquies, a great number of set-pieces and foreshadowing relies on pure coincidence.The script is constantly testing whether these characters are supposed geniuses outmatched or merely idiots outwitted by another idiot. One particular if insignificant moment of clumsy writing is the repeated mantra of a situation only being secure "on the drive home", the heroes of course proving this right... when boarding a helicopter to safety. Could've easily been fixed for "on the way home" but it doesn't affect the story.In a world of post-modern, meta-narrative ironies, Harlin is successful in his sheer earnestness for pure, dumb, entertainment. For a film about investigative geniuses battling a criminal mastermind, it's best to leave your brain at the door.

The cast of Mind Hunters is as weird and diverse as any movie can get, but what turned me on to this film was the fact that it was Directed by Renny Harlin. Harlin is a legend in the world of action films, responsible for such films as Die Hard 2, 12 Rounds, & The Long Kiss Goodnight. He usually doesn't waste his time on direct-to-video films, and prefers to feature his own people, but the story here was so good, that he must of made an exception. Mind Hunters follows seven FBI agents who are training to be profilers, under the watch of the toughest trainer there ever was, Jake Harris (Val Kilmer). For their final test, the group goes to a small island the navy uses for training, and must work together in order to catch a serial killer that doesn't exist or do they? Once they begin their investigation, the group quickly come to realize that the scene is booby trapped and they are cut off from the outside world, trapped on an island with a killer. While having a unique location and a terrific director, what I really enjoyed about this film was how it was more than just some slasher film. This group isn't just a bunch of frat girls running from a guy in a hockey mask, they are trained, intelligent, FBI agents, trying to figure out which one of them is responsible for setting the rest up. This film features all the fighting, gun battles, and chases that you get in a typical action thriller, but there is also a methodical obsession among the group to find the one that betrayed them, and for that this film is unique. Kathryn Morris stars and has more than enough experience playing a detective, after sever years on Cold Case. Likewise LL Cool J has played a cop on numerous occasions, most recently on NCIS: Los Angles. Going into the film, I wasn't all that crazy about this cast, but once I got into it, I realized that they were brought together, because all of these guys have plays cops, FBI agents, or some kind of law enforcer in the past. That mix of unique personalities and experience help this film, because what the cast lacks in talent, they make up for with experience. Mind Hunters isn't something you've never seen before, but it brings together several different common themes in a new way and it will keep you on the edge of your seat.

A group of FBI serial killer profilers is sent to a mock town on an uninhabited island for training, only to discover that one of them is an actual serial killer.Let me start by saying that this film is as dumb as a sack of rocks. Much of it makes no sense at all, not least of which are some of the impossibly convoluted killing methods, which depend on knowing that so-and-so will be standing in just such a position at just such a time - murder by dominoes and liquid nitrogen being a case in point. I can envision someone being unprepared to suspend disbelief over that, so that the film turns them off completely. Personally, I thought it was a hoot.And I think the cast has fun chewing the scenery in an over-the-top load of old nonsense, directed by Renny Harlin with panache, style, and tongue firmly in cheek.So did I.