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Along Came a Spider - Movie Reviews

May 9, 2021

After Washington, D.C., detective forensic psychologist and author Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) loses control of a sting operation, resulting in the death of his partner, he retires from the force. He is drawn back to police work when Megan Rose (Mika Boorem), the daughter of a United States senator, is kidnapped from her exclusive private school by Gary Soneji (Michael Wincott), a computer science teacher. US Secret Service Special Agent Jezzie Flannigan (Monica Potter), held responsible for the breach in security, joins forces with Cross to find the missing girl. Soneji contacts Cross by phone and alerts him to the fact one of Megan's sneakers is in the detective's mailbox, proving that Soneji is the kidnapper. Cross deduces that the man is obsessed with the 1932 Charles A. Lindbergh Jr. kidnapping and hopes to become as infamous as Bruno Hauptmann by committing a new "Crime of the Century", which might be explored by Cross in one of his true crime books. Megan's kidnapping proves to be only part of Soneji's real plan: to kidnap Dimitri Starodubov (Anton Yelchin), the son of the Russian president, and guarantee greater infamy for himself... Rotten Tomatoes critics consensus was "Derivative and contains too many implausible situations." Elvis Mitchell of The New York Times called the film an "overplotted, hollow thriller, which crams in so much exposition that characters speak in fetid hunks for what seems like minutes at a time ... But Spider couldn't be better served than it is by Mr. Freeman, whose prickly smarts and silken impatience bring believability to a classless, underdeveloped thriller ... Still, he is wasted in this impersonal, almost inept thriller." Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave the film a mixed 2 out of 4 stars, calling it "loophole-riddled, verging on the nonsensical". He wrote, "I'm wondering, since Dr. Alex Cross is so brilliant, how come he doesn't notice yawning logical holes in the very fabric of the story he's occupying?" Nonetheless, Ebert thought that Freeman's performance was commendable. "Maybe actors should be given Oscars," he wrote, "not for the good films they triumph in, but for the weak films they survive." Robert Koehler of Variety felt "the very characteristics that have made Cross so appealing, particularly his mind-tickling abilities to assess and outmaneuver his criminal opponents, are reduced here to the most fundamental and predictable level ... As reliable as any actor in Hollywood, Freeman delivers the requisite gravitas, but the bland script curtails any personal touches he might have inserted were his sleuth character unraveling a truly vexing mystery." The second Alex Cross film with Morgan Freeman in the lead is quite generic despite attemps to plot twists. Michael Wincott does his standard bad guy while the lovely Monica Potter adds an aura to the film as US Secret Service Special Agent Jezzie Flannigan. It´s the second installment in the Alex Cross film series and a sequel to the 1997 film "Kiss the Girls". The screenplay by Marc Moss was adapted from the 1993 novel of the same title by James Patterson, but many of the key plot elements of the book were eliminated. The film was a box office success, although receiving mixed reviews from critics.

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Reinaldo Massengill

Update: 2024-05-03