E-Mail This Article to a Friend SUSPECT ZERO

Ben Kingsley has two modes these days: mannered homicidal maniac (Sexy Beast) and hammy grief-stricken victim (House of Sand and Fog). He gets to show off both in E. Elias Merhige’s overwrought and half-baked thriller. In the first scene, his ominous feet enter the frame, he accosts a portly salesman in a diner with menacing non-sequiturs, and things end badly for the salesman. The case sparks some life in the backwater New Mexico FBI office where agent Thomas Mackelway (Aaron Eckhart) has been exiled after blowing a previous investigation by showing too much zeal. Hooked up for melodramatic effect with his ex-partner Fran (Carrie-Anne Moss), Mackelway connects the salesman’s death to many others and determines that the perpetrator is not only a serial killer but possibly a renegade agent hunting serial killers. It seems Kingsley’s character has a capability called "remote viewing" that allows him to enter the experience of the killers and their victims and so track the killers down. After 2000’s classy, original Shadow of the Vampire, Merhige appears to have been afflicted by multiple viewings of Seven and Eyes of Laura Mars. He drapes the clumsy narrative with gratuitous stylistic mannerisms and effects, but in the end, it’s not just the suspect that proves a zero. (100 minutes)