Mindhunters
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| Mindhunters | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster for Mindhunters |
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| Directed by | Renny Harlin |
| Produced by | Moritz Borman Guy East |
| Written by | Story: Wayne Kramer Screenplay: Wayne Kramer Kevin Brodbin Uncredited: Ehren Kruger |
| Starring | LL Cool J Jonny Lee Miller Kathryn Morris Patricia Velásquez Clifton Collins Jr. Eion Bailey Will Kemp with Val Kilmer and Christian Slater |
| Distributed by | - USA - Dimension Films - non-USA - Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 2004 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Mindhunters is a 2004 crime thriller, directed by Renny Harlin and written by Wayne Kramer and Kevin Brodbin (with an uncredited rewrite by Ehren Kruger). Unusually, the last country to receive this film was the United States in 2005, because of the film changing hands from 20th Century Fox to Dimension Films.
The plot has striking similarities to Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None.
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[edit] Plot
The titular Mindhunters are a group of young FBI students who are undergoing training as profilers. Near the start of the film, they are tasked by their instructor Jake Harris, a near-legendary profiler in his own right, to travel to a small island off the coast of Virginia. This island is used as a training facility by several branches of the government, including the FBI and the military, and a mock town has been constructed there. Harris has arranged an elaborate training scenario for his students; they are to create a profile of a sociopathic serial killer who has supposedly committed a murder there.
The students include Bobby (a young man with a penchant and talent for fixing things), Vince (a wheelchair-bound ex-cop who goes nowhere without a gun), Nicole (a die-hard smoker who is attempting to quit), Sara (whose confidence in her abilities has been shaken by a training exercise at the start of the film, shortly after she had a nightmare when she recalled her sister being raped and murdered), Gabe (an outside observer and a formidable detective), Rafe (who is very intelligent, and apparently caffeine-powered), Lucas (a supposedly fearless young man whose parents were killed when he was a child), and J.D. (their leader).
Once they arrive at the island and settle in (some better than others), they begin their investigation the following day. Almost immediately, the group encounters an elaborate, Rube Goldberg-style trap; J.D.'s position of leadership prompts him to investigate it close-up, and the trap kills him horribly. Convinced that this wasn't an accident, the group heads to the dock to leave the island. Another trap is triggered, this one destroying the boat docked there. Tensions run high among the group, and they find messages from the killer (apparently quite real) that indicate when more victims will be killed.
One by one, several more of the profilers are killed, in ways that correspond to their personalities: Rafe through his need for coffee (drugged; decapitated and drained of blood while unconscious); Bobby through his desire to repair things (harpooned by a device he triggered while trying to shut off a water valve); Nicole through her need for nicotine (after finding cigarettes in a vending machine, they turn out to be laced with a strong acid); and Vince through his need to have his gun handy (it had been rigged while he was unconscious to explosively misfire).
In between these events, the investigators use the resources at hand (including a fully-stocked forensics lab and computer database) to process the clues they have (including blood samples and an elaborate cypher, written in Rafe's blood). The results point to Sara, who denies being the killer; Lucas supports her, and suspicions seem to point to Gabe. The remaining profilers elect to stick together, to keep an eye on each other. Later, Sara, Gabe and Lucas find Harris (who did not leave the island, though he led the profilers to believe that he had) and two security guards next to him, all dead; Harris has been strung up to wires from the ceiling as a sort of perverse marionette, just like the fake crime scene that they were to investigate. Outside, Gabe shoots Lucas as Sara figures Gabe is the killer. Lucas comes back and seemingly kills Gabe.
Sara explains to Lucas that she used her mind and remembered what Harris had always told her. She set a trap for the killer. Sara soon finds her theory wrong as Lucas reveals that he is the killer, telling her that he set up the entire scenario, preparing the various traps ahead of time and while the rest of the group was unconscious from the drugged coffee. He claims that he did it all for infamy, as he did not gain any for killing his own parents as a child.
Lucas then tries to drown Sara, but she manages to shoot him twice, finally killing him. Gabe (who was not killed earlier) joins her, and the following day they are evacuated from the island.
[edit] Deaths
- 1. J.D.: While investigating the scene of a hung puppet, a small kiddie radio goes off playing an awkward tune. Sara is about to turn it off, but J.D. stops her and presses to stop it instead. It sets off a row of dominoes, which hit more contraptions, until it knocks down a tank of liquid nitrogen. It starts to spray on J.D.'s legs, and eventually freezes him and he breaks into large pieces when he hits the ground. While the others are looking in horror, his eyes freeze and he is left in frozen pieces. Note: When the dominoes are falling, it shows a glimpse of blue marbles with eyes depicted on them, which represents JD eyes when they froze.
- 2. Rafe: All the detectives fall unconscious after drinking drugged coffee. During this, the killer, who's not drugged, drains Rafe's blood and puts it all over the glass in numbers. They all wake up later on, and start blaming each other on who's the killer among them, and what was in the coffee. Rafe seems asleep on the table, so Bobby pulls him back. Having no blood, his head rips off in the sudden movement.
- 3. Bobby: After Gabe saves Vince from dying in electrocuted water, the whole basement is full of water with water still pouring out of a pipe. Lucas asks how they would shut the water, and Bobby, the one who knows all about objects and physics, looks at the dial and shuts it off. It triggers three arrows in front of him to be shot, and they shoot into his neck and chest. He falls back into the water and dies.
- 4. Nicole: Sara is thought to be the killer after a blood sample from under Rafe's fingernail. Nicole leaves in frustration, and the others keep on discussing their situation, while Sara realizes the traps are based on their strengths and weaknesses. Nicole, who's out in the halls, finds a cigarette box in a cigarette machine. She goes outside and starts to smoke, but the cigarettes turn out to be laced with acid. She burns her finger, and the acid that she inhaled ends up burning through her face and chest.
- 5. Harris: Stabbed repeatedly, then strung up like a puppet with various metallic hooks and strings (off-screen).
- 6. Security Guard #1: Stabbed and strangled with a wire(off-screen).
- 7. Security Guard #2: Stabbed to death(off-screen).
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- 8. Vince: After Vince has gotten a full magazine from the morgue, he drags himself into the elevator. However, as the doors close, a shadowy figure moves into view of Vince, and although we don't see the figure's face, Vince recognizes the figure, so he raises his gun and fires as the doors shut. However, the killer rigged the gun to backfire, presumably from a jammed/blocked barrel. The gun backfires and explodes, launching the slider and other bits of shrapnel directly into Vince's forehead and face. Sara later calls the elevator, and the door opens to reveal a dead Vince in the blood splattered elevator.
- 9. Lucas: Thought to be killed while in the middle of the training area at first by bullets, but actually ended up surviving thanks to a bullet-proof jacket. He survives that, though Sara shoots him in the neck and in the head during their little battle at the end.
[edit] Trivia
- The movie was filmed in 2002, but went unreleased until 2005.
- Most of the scenes at the FBI-training facility were filmed at a former radiostation in The Netherlands, called Radio Kootwijk. In the movie, this is the large concrete building that is located on an island off the coast of Viriginia. In reality the building is situated in the forest of the Veluwe in The Netherlands.
- Ehren Kruger provided an uncredited script rewrite.
- A small Finnish flag can be seen in the background in the scene in which LL Cool J's character is handcuffed to a bed. This was an affectionate nod by director Harlin to his native Finland.
- On the DVD commentary track Harlin stated that were he given the chance to go back and make the film again he would be a little more restrained with the violence. He also stated that at one point he submitted a cut of the film to the MPAA with almost all of the violence removed in hopes of acquiring a PG-13, but the ratings board still felt that the overall tone of the film was too strong and issued it an R. Following this, Harlin decided to reinsert the gore.
- Gerard Butler was originally set to play Lucas, but dropped out to film Timeline. He did, however, recommend his Dracula 2000 co-star Johnny Lee Miller to take over his role.
