Mindhunters

[Foreword: I screened this on January 14, 2004, prior to there being a firm release date; also prior to my having seen Exorcist: The Beginning]

Hello, my name is Staci and I am a Renny Harlin fan. It all started in the 80s, naturally. Back then, we thought the party would never end. I saw Nightmare on Elm Street 4 and I was hooked. This led me to Die Hard 2, and then the harder stuff, like Cutthroat Island. I saw The Long Kiss Goodnight and by god,  I liked it. Yes, liked it. In 1999 Deep Blue Sea put me on the high seas. But then in 2001 I hit bottom with Driven. I saw that back to back with a rerun of Cliffhanger, and I thought that was it. I was cured of Harlin fandom. A couple of Renny-free years went by. Then just when I thought I was out, he pulled me back in with Mindhunters.

Mindhunters is a horror thriller which focuses on a team of would-be FBI profilers during a training exercise on a deserted island. Soon enough, things go terribly wrong and like Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians the Fibbys start to die one by one, leaving those still living suspicious of each other and beyond paranoid.

The story is lurid fun, not to be taken seriously. While watching Mindhunters you will either resist all the way and discount every incongruity, or you will sit back, relax and enjoy the white knuckle ride. Despite the jarringly bad prosthetics and ultra fake-looking corpses, I was still able to be in that second camp and let myself go with the mind tryst.

This latest Harlin flick is a gore-filled, thrill-filled, ratchet tight roller coaster ride with an interesting assortment of characters and actors: Val Kilmer plays the big cheese,  the teacher of the course and the creator of the exercise which lands the hapless group on the island, trying to find a fictional serial killer called The Puppeteer.  Christian Slater is the fearless leader of the FBI students, and Kathryn Morris (of TV's Cold Case series) plays his head-to-head match.  Jonny Lee Miller is a surly know-it-all, and L.L. Cool J is a wild card. Patricia Velasquez (The Mummy Returns), Will Kemp (Van Helsing), and Clifton Collins, Jr. (The Hillside Strangler) round out the cast.

It's true your mind won't have to do much hunting in Mindhunters -- this is more like foraging in the grocery store -- but the tried and true "everyone is a potential killer" premise is fun, and the scripts offers up some cringe-inducing, memorable death scenes. Mindhunters is a good way to, er, kill a couple of hours.

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson