Plot:
Washington DC detective Dr. Alex Cross travels to North Carolina to investigate the apparent kidnapping of his niece. Aided by escaped kidnapee Kate McTiernan, Cross hunts down the kidnapper, who operates under the pseudonym "Cassanova". - John Hawkinson

Comment:
This movie seems to be a mix of Seven (mostly because both movies have the same main actor, Morgan Freeman, playing a similar role), The Silence of the Lambs and even Scream... unfortunately, it doesn't manage to reach the quality of none of these movies and, actually, it may simply recall an ordinary episode of the TV series Millennium which is not really a good compliment!

The story is about a serial killer with a difference: he abducts a number of pretty and virtuous girls and puts them in his personal human collection, he only kills a few of them when 'forced' (the exact meaning of this word in this context is left vague on purpose...). Morgan Freeman is a police psychologist and when his nephew is kidnapped, he decides to investigate even if the crime happened outside his local district. He is mainly helped by the only girl that managed to escape from the collector's prison and by a few friends in the FBI and in the local police.

While the plot develops there are various interesting novelties rarely found in similar thrillers, the setting and the photograph are good and the two main actors play very well their roles. This last point is probably the main strength of the movie but, from my point of view, good actors have never been enough to lift up the level of an average movie.

In fact, the main deficiencies can be found in the plot which is somewhat flawed in various points and this recalls too closely a number of low-budget TV movies where the intelligence of the evil characters seems to vanish suddenly, after they managed to perpetrate their crimes for ages without being caught. For example, it is definitely unlikely that a supposed serial killer didn't notice two cars following him while he drives to his home which is the only building at the very end of a solitary road in the middle of a wood!

I didn't catch any hint about the identity of the serial killer, probably there weren't any until the very end. However, excluding the most obvious candidates, very few people remained available and an easy 50/50 guess could have been made which removed any surprise and any interest in the final lame scene. So, it seems almost useless to say that the end is far from catchy and if the director wanted to put any suspense in it I completely missed it!