Suspect Zero, directed by E. Elias Merhige, is an implausible mystery story within a mystery story--a serial killer who is killing serial killers while the FBI dithers due to its own procedural imperatives. When the film begins, Benjamin O'Ryan (played by Ben Kingsley) suddenly appears across the table from traveling salesman Harold Speck (played by Kevin Chamberlin) on a rainy night at a Gallup, New Mexico, roadside diner and puts sketches of corpses on the table in front of him. The man then goes to his car, but O'Ryan is already in the back seat. Meanwhile, FBI agent Tom Mackelway (played by Aaron Eckhart), after a six-month suspension for violating Bureau procedure that resulted in the nonconviction of a serial killer, is reassigned from Dallas to "minor league" Albuquerque. So is his former partner Fran Kulok (played by Carrie-Anne Moses), though she has little role in the film other than as someone who can listen to Mackelway's inferences from the accumulating evidence despite a failed romantic relationship in Dallas that they have not yet overcome. Mackelway has a lot of headaches, presumably the psychosomatic response to his suspension, but perhaps also due to the efforts of O'Ryan to pass along clues telepathically. The duo's first case involves Speck, who ostensibly was killed when his car went off the edge of the road, but Mackelway quickly infers that a murder was committed. The FBI assumes jurisdiction because the vehicle is positioned on the state line between Arizona and New Mexico, so Kulok and Mackelway are assigned to the case, but not coincidentally. Someone has placed a notebook-sized drawing in the dead man's hand that appears to be a circle with a line crossed through, and there is an eye bulging out of an eyelidless socket. At the office, Mackelway receives a fax consisting of FBI missing persons bulletins of young children and an anonymous note asking him why he is having headaches; other envelopes provide sketches and hints of other crimes. When he goes to the victim's home, Mackelway senses that there is something awry, so he goes into Speck's attic, where he finds evidence that the victim was a serial killer. Soon, other killings occur with the crossed-out circle as a clue, and a mysterious O'Ryan, who claims to be a former FBI agent, leaves more evidence. The FBI, however, has no record of an O'Ryan, past or present. When news of the crossed-out murders excite the press, a university professor informs Mackelway that one of his former students, named Benjamin O'Ryan, advanced a "suspect zero" theory which posits that a serial killer could strike randomly and never be caught (possibly referring to the unsolved Zodiac killer who terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s). When Mackelway goes to O'Ryan's last known address, a living facility for harmless catatonic mental patients, he discovers corroboration that O'Ryan has been obsessed with the suspect zero theory, and an insane inmate notes that what has been crossed out is a zero, not a circle. Mackelway concludes that O'Ryan is tracking down serial killers and then murdering them, but of course other FBI officials see O'Ryan as the possible serial killer. The FBI then seeks to arrest O'Ryan by setting up a dragnet around Albuquerque, though a highway patrol officer locates him on the road outside town and then clumsily fails to arrest him. Eventually, Mackelway meets O'Ryan, who explains that he was one of a few FBI agents trained to visualize suspects in a Project Icarus, which originated in Russia, but that he became so compulsively obsessed with apprehending suspects by "remote viewing" that he could not live a normal life. The suspense then shifts to the biggest serial killer of all, someone who could be called the Refrigerator Truck Killer, a pursuit in which Mackelway and O'Ryan eventually cooperate, though the latter takes the lead (pun intended). However, the plot leaves many questions unanswered. Why did O'Ryan pick on Mackelway, who presumably was not the best FBI agent available? Why did the FBI office allow Mackelway to receive private communications from O'Ryan? Why was O'Ryan, a onetime FBI agent, not in the FBI's current database? Why was the highway patrol officer so clumsy in attempting to apprehend O'Ryan? Who would believe that the FBI or the Russians ever had a project dealing with visualization techniques? Why is there such a large discrepancy between the Refrigerator Truck Killer's burial mounds and the number of children whom he supposedly murdered? The thrill comes out of the thriller as filmviewers leave the movie asking questions about the credibility of the plot. New Mexico state government, which provided an interest-free $7.5 million loan to make the film in exchange for 2.5 percent of the profits, will doubtless be chagrined as well by the fact that the cinematography scrimps on the state's beauty, such that the only touristic curiosity excited in the film will be to look either for nondescript body dump sites or for such oddly named towns as Truth or Consequences and (mispronounced) Tucumcari. Instead, filmviewers see a dance festival and view scenes in the ordinary towns of Estancia, Jemez Pueblo, Jemez Springs, Willard, and Zia Pueblo, as well as a few buildings in Albuquerque. MH
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