Along Came a Spider

Along Came a Spider is an action thriller starring Morgan Freeman as Alex Cross, the serial killer expert from Kiss the Girls. The film starts with a chase scene that goes horribly wrong, and Cross helplessly watches as his partner gets killed. Blaming himself, he goes into a kind of early retirement and gets a hobby that takes all his concentration. Meanwhile, we watch the goings on at a school for children with rich parents, and we meet Megan Rose, a senator's daughter. Because the children's parents are rich, this makes the children prime kidnapping targets, so the school is partly controlled by the Secret Service whose agents guard the children all day. When the impossible happens and Megan is successfully kidnapped, agent Jezzie Flannigan, played by Monica Potter, is blamed. On the verge of losing her job, she teams up with Cross, and together they must solve the case and return Megan safely home.

I enjoyed Along Came a Spider, mainly because of Freeman's performance as the Cross character. Michael Wincott was also excellent as the twisted and evil kidnapper who, of course, has a devilish British accent. The film was very well executed and has some terrific action sequences. What I didn't like about it was the computer gadgetry. Most people who have used the Internet know that web cams do not have the capabilities that Cross uses in one critical scene. Worse, when Cross is faced with a computer password to crack, he guesses it in one try. Now we know Cross is a brilliant man, but cracking a password needs more than brilliance and it was just needed for the plot so that a load of windows could open sending him straight to the scene of the crime. That kind of thing can spoil a film for me, but I'm willing to overlook it in this case. There is also the obligatory sequence where the bad guy has Cross running all over town with just enough time to get to the next phone for instructions on where the next phone is. Eventually he leads Cross onto a train and well, it's all standard fare really.

Of course, although the story seems like a simple but elaborate kidnapping, there's more to it than meets the eye at first, and there are of course several twists, which, looking back were not entirely convincing. The little girl, Megan, is great though. After Cross she's the most intelligent character in the film. She's too brave for her own good, and determined to get out alive.