This is a weird, weird movie. Basically, Keanu Reeves plays a serial killer who becomes so obsessed with James Spader (the FBI agent who is trying to catch Keanu), that Keanu kidnaps Spader's girlfriend, who ends up dying. The killer actually even says that he does this because he thought the FBI guy was spending too much time focusing on her instead of him (!). FBI guy then has a nervous breakdown of some sort, quits the FBI, moves across the country and lives on disability in what is probably the most depressing apartment ever. James Spader really gives this role 110%. He looks like he's in excruciating pain all the time.
The killer tries to get on with his life, even trying to form a new "relationship" with the new FBI agent assigned to track him down, but it's just not the same. So the killer follows Spader across country and mails him pictures of girls he is going to (and has) killed, in order to coax the former FBI guy back into tracking him. When this fails to get the attention of Spader (he's a total basketcase and doesn't open his mail), the killer SENDS HIM FLOWERS, along with a picture of the girl Keanu is going to kill in 24 hours unless Spader can find her first. This effectively breaks the basketcase away from his new full time job of staring at the walls of his bleak apartment and gets him back in the swing of hunting the killer.
Up to this point, the movie is actually really good and engaging. I cared about this broken shell of a man who is trying to recover from his mental breakdown caused by a maniac who refuses (for what appear to be rather taboo reasons) to leave him alone. But about halfway through the film, the movie seemed to just sort of give up and degenerated into a fairly run of the mill cat-and-mouse type thing. Usually, when a movie starts out quirky, it stays quirky. Or if it's going to be mediocre, it starts out that way and doesn't change. This movie could have been something really special if the filmmakers would have had the guts to follow through on the set up and what was REALLY going on between the killer and the FBI guy, instead of just letting the movie devolve into a boring rehash of just about every other cop-chasing-maniacal-killer movie we've ever seen.
The killer tries to get on with his life, even trying to form a new "relationship" with the new FBI agent assigned to track him down, but it's just not the same. So the killer follows Spader across country and mails him pictures of girls he is going to (and has) killed, in order to coax the former FBI guy back into tracking him. When this fails to get the attention of Spader (he's a total basketcase and doesn't open his mail), the killer SENDS HIM FLOWERS, along with a picture of the girl Keanu is going to kill in 24 hours unless Spader can find her first. This effectively breaks the basketcase away from his new full time job of staring at the walls of his bleak apartment and gets him back in the swing of hunting the killer.
Up to this point, the movie is actually really good and engaging. I cared about this broken shell of a man who is trying to recover from his mental breakdown caused by a maniac who refuses (for what appear to be rather taboo reasons) to leave him alone. But about halfway through the film, the movie seemed to just sort of give up and degenerated into a fairly run of the mill cat-and-mouse type thing. Usually, when a movie starts out quirky, it stays quirky. Or if it's going to be mediocre, it starts out that way and doesn't change. This movie could have been something really special if the filmmakers would have had the guts to follow through on the set up and what was REALLY going on between the killer and the FBI guy, instead of just letting the movie devolve into a boring rehash of just about every other cop-chasing-maniacal-killer movie we've ever seen.