It may sound like sacrilege to say out loud, but not every movie has to contain intelligent dialogue, smartly sketched characters and be scripted tighter than a duck’s ass to ensure that it’s a fun experience. Take the filmography of Renny Harlin for example, who has proved time and time again that dumb thrills can sometimes provide the most fun experiences. Be it the extravagant style over substance of Nightmare On Elm Street Part 4, the how-can-the-same-shit-happen-to-the-same-guy-twice musings of Die Hard 2, or even the shark vs scientist lunacy of Deep Blue Sea, the Finnish filmmaker has been a reliable source of big dumb fun for a while now – but in 2004, did he finally step over the line? After sitting on the shelf for two years before finally getting released, Mindhunters proved to be an exceptionally stupid film, even by the director’s energetic standards. But did this story of FBI profilers being stalked by a puzzle-loving murderer on a deserted island prove to be good dumb, or just dumb dumb?
Ace profiler Jake Harris is renowned for his gruelling teaching methods as he attempts to weed out the best of the best in order to secure the smartest go on to work for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and while the trainees currently at his mercy are frequently intimidated by the vivid and detailed scenarios he has them work through, he’s saved the most extravagant for last. Travelling to an private island off the coast of North Carolina, their final exercise is to figure out the murderous riddle of a sadistic serial killer called “The Puppeteer” and to do so, they’ll have to search for clues among the fake town the Navy uses for hostage drills.
However, with experienced agent, J.D. Reston in charge, it soon seems that every member of the exam has their own, various issues that would make them vulnerable if this scenario were actually real.
For example, Sara Moore has unresolved trauma over her sister’s murder; Vince Sherman is still bitter about the shooting that put him in a wheelchair and the various others present also have the odd mental achilles heel which proves to put them all in a stew when they discover that their training exercise has been co-opted by a deranged maniac. With various, lethal booby straps scattered around the island specifically coded to the quirks of it’s particular victim, the killer also seems to be operating on a precise time frame marked out by various watches left in precise places.
But who could be responsible for such sadism? Has Harris gone off the deep end and enacting one of his scenarios for real? Is the presence of profiler Gabe Jensen as an impartial observer proof of something far less impartial? Or has one of the trainees decided to perform their own, vicious exam, that’ll test the skills of their peers to the limits?
Mindhunters is one of those movies that’s supposed to be about incredibly smart people facing down an incredibly smart foe – and yet I’m willing to wager that there’s a good chance Harlin’s ludicrous psycho-thriller could be one of the stupidest films you’ve ever seen. While I’ve already mentioned that the director has been tending his own little corner of ridiculousness for years, the nature of his films tends to persevere because the silliness of the plot tends to deliver spectacularly fun moments. Is watching a shark using Stellan Skarsgård strapped to a gurney as a battering ram a ludicrous image? Of course it is, but it’s also fucking cool – which is the same as Geena Davis and Samuel L. Jackson leaping out of an exploding window in The Long Kiss Goodnight or Sylvester Stallone bench pressing a screaming terrorist into a stalagtite during Cliffhanger. But for a film like Mindhunter – which essentially is a Friday The 13th movie with smug intellectuals rather than horny teens, you’d think that the predictably bombastic Fin would tone things down a bit and go for subtlety.
Not so. Opting to dispense with common sense and any form of subtlety whatsoever, Harlin instead eagerly resorts to massively over the top kills, action movie logic and an impressively mean tone that might have played a little better if the flick has cashed in its chips and just claimed it was a straight horror movie all along. Similarly, any hope of the script managing to give us any compelling arcs also fall short whenever the director wants to stage a gnarly death scene or stage a montage of forensic investigation and spinning test tubes to pounding techno music – no really, that’s something that actually happens.
The cast either includes a clutch of overacting character actors (Johnny Lee Miller, Clifton Collins Jr., Patricia Velasquez), slumming stars who show up for extended cameos (Val Kilmer, Christian Slater), or LL Cool J who seems incredibly emboldened by the fact that he’s a black actor that’s so far made it to the end credits of both Halloween H20 and Deep Blue Sea. To be honest, most seem to be there in order to score extravagant death sequences, such as getting frozen with liquid nitrogen, taking a drag off an acid-laced cigarette, or simply having your head drop off.
Still, if there’s a quick and easy way to explain what watching Mindhunter is like, imagine an episode of Criminal Minds directed by a deranged, coked-up James Wan that sees LL Cool J deliver a string of action movie dialogue so heavy handed you have to hear it to believe it. “Eeney meeny miny moe; who’s the next motherfucker to go.” is one such example and surely he deserves some sort of award for making “I guess we found out his weakness, bullets.” sound even remotely natural, but some of the other actors plainly struggle with what they’ve been given to say. In their defence, this is a movie that requires a character to sleepily mumble “Have to stay awake…” out loud after discovering they’ve been drugged, so I guess I shouldn’t be too hard on them.
Still, while the plot and dialogue feel like it was written by a a twelve year old – these really are the dumbest collection of FBI trainees you’re ever likely to see – Harlin manages to pull it back with some gloriously over the top demises (it’s not every day you see someone frozen solid and shattered like a human-sized ice cube), a couple of genuinely cool action sequences (the underwater shootout is so good it really deserves to be in a better film) and a delirious sense of the absurd that proves to be stupidly endearing despite itself. Where else are you going to see a world-famous actor turned into a grotesque, life-sized puppet and made to dance to a jaunty tune?
If you’re type that’s going to negatively profile a film for being grossly idiotic, then the clumsy whodunit of Mindhunters is especially not for you. However, those who can get a chuckle from the outlandishly exaggerated and wildly inappropriate tone may find you might wanna pick Renny Harlin’s brains – or lack thereof.
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