Trackman

Trackman (2007)

Three men decide to rob a bank and use a nearby tunnel to escape without detection. But when the plan goes wrong and a couple of cops are shot they end up trapped in the tunnel with their hostages. With them in the tunnel is a crazed killer who takes them out one at a time. But he doesn’t just kill them, for he takes their eyes for his collection. A collection that of course the survivors stumble over as they try to flee from him. Do any of them make it out alive? Do we ever find out why the killer is murdering them? The answers are yes and not really. There see now I’ve helped save you some time.

After that last line I’m pretty sure that you know where this review is going. Lets begin with the story. This movie spends most of the time trying to emulate (nice word for steal from) other much better horror movies. You have the violent criminals and their hostages (Scarecrows, From Dusk until Dawn) trying to keep from being killed while escaping with their loot. Then you have the giant killer that manages to sneak up on his victims without them noticing. Which I guess is good for him since most of them are heavily armed. And maybe it is just me but about halfway thru I knew exactly who was going to survive. Why you ask? This is because for no discernable reason one of the hostages suddenly becomes very attached to one of the bank robbers. Immediately I knew who would live and who was toast. If this weren’t enough they decide to take an inexplicably silly twist ending on the end that serves no purpose. Finally I have to say that I was bored to death watching this thing. This movie is so mind numbingly slow that you will need your no doze to get thru it. Better yet just take my word on it and skip this one.

This is another one of those movies where I don’t feel comfortable talking about the performances of the cast. The dubbing in this movie is atrocious with lines either being delivered monotone and overly calm or yelled. In particular one of the female hostages spends the first half of the movie shrieking thru her lines or at least the voice actress hired to dub her lines does. I can say that there is nothing about the cast that makes me want to recommend anyone watch the movie.

Now in spite of being terribly boring this movie does have a couple of cool things going for it. The kills are lame, but insinuated eye extractions that happen and almost happen did have me squirming a bit. Also the look of the killer Trackman, while not terribly original, is neat. I could see a character like this becoming iconic if it weren’t wasted in such a terrible movie. Also need to mention that there is a great deal of the dreaded shaky camera work in this movie that all the “hip” films are using, which I find annoying and cheap.

I’m going to give this movie one star because of the look of the killer and the creepy as hell stuff with the eyes. But that is in no way a recommendation that anyone should waste his or her time or hard earned cash watching this one.

1 out of 4

reviewed by John Shatzer