Pssst, want to check out The Watcher in our new look?
Information
- Year
- 2000
- Runtime
- 97 min.
- Director
- Joe Charbanic
- Genres
- Crime, Thriller, Mystery
- Rating *
- 5.3
- Votes *
- 20,228
- Checks
- 986
- Favs
- 15
- Dislikes
- 58
- Favs/checks
- 1.5% (1:66)
- Favs/dislikes
- 1:4
Top comments
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Siskoid
On the page, The Watcher is a fair thriller about an FBI agent haunted by the serial killer he never caught having to return to the case when the killer follows him to another city and forces him to be involved in a Riddler-Batman dynamic. On the screen, it looks like a TV pilot for a crime show where every week James Spader would profile and chase down serial killers in Chicago with his action-comedy guy pal Chris Ellis from the Chicago PD, and then tell his therapist Marisa Tomei about it, Sopranos-style. And look, somehow they got Keanu Reeves to play the killer, real Columbo casting there. Ellis is just about the only one with energy in this thing, and that includes the director, who shoots this like it's TV. Even when he tries for style, all he manages is cheesy effects that evoke the television of the era - polarized frames and slow-motion. Made a couple years later, I'm sure it would have had internal body cavity zoom-ins like C.S.I. Keanu is particularly bland as the killer, but the way he tells it, he didn't want to do the film and only did because "a friend" forged his name on the contract and he decided to do the work rather than fight a legal battle. The scam didn't end there, when the glorified cameo of the script turned into a time-consuming co-lead. And that, folks, is a story ultimately more intriguing than The Watcher. 4 years 6 months ago -
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