Along Came a Spider – Movie Review
Synopsis: After the harrowing death of his partner, detective and best-selling author Alex Cross has retreated to the peace of retirement. But when a brilliant criminal kidnaps a senator’s young daughter, Alex is lured back into action. Teamed with the Secret Service agent assigned to protect the missing girl, Alex follows a serpentine trail of clues that leads him to a stunning discovery – the kidnapper wants more than just ransom… he wants Alex’s help in documenting the crime of the century. With time running out, Alex plunges through a tangled web of danger and deceit to stop a madman and save an innocent victim’s life.
Rating: R for violence and language
Run Time: 1 hour 44 minutes
Director: Lee Tamahori
Dvd Extra’s: Theatrical Trailer, Behind the Scenes Featurette.
Nudity Factor: None.
Of Note: This film was made after Kiss the Girls (1997), but the book was set before the prior film.
Recommendations: A Time to Kill
The story follows a detective Alex Cross who lost his partner in a sting operation. He has since retired and focused on his writings. That all changes when an important girl goes missing from a private school that is crawling with security. The kidnappers have more in mind that just a kidnapping. The story is nothing original. Actually while watching this I started to think I had already seen this even though I never have. The old story, a bad guy does something, then only wants to deal with a certain cop. Yep been done a million times. Also this has movie seems to have a lot of inconsistencies. I overlooked most of them but in a review I have to mention that they are part of the movie. I also am very confused with the R rating. First off if this movie was made in 2018 it would have gotten a PG-13 rating and even if not they could have made a few adjustments to prevent an R rating even when this was made. Of course Morgan Freeman is great as always but the rest of the cast is pretty hit or miss.
Overall the movie on the surface is good but if you dig beyond the surface you start to see the flaws. It starts with that right off the bat with a very confusing sequence but maybe it would not be as confusing if I had seen the first movie. I rather watch them in the order they were written. This is not something I would watch again but it was certainly not the worst movie I had ever seen.