Mindhunters
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| Mindhunters | |
|---|---|
 Promotional poster for Mindhunters |
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| Directed by | Renny Harlin |
| Produced by | Moritz Borman Guy East |
| Written by | Story: Wayne Kramer Screenplay: Wayne Kramer Kevin Brodbin Uncredited: Ehren Kruger |
| Starring | LL Cool J Jonny Lee Miller Kathryn Morris Patricia Velásquez Clifton Collins Jr. Eion Bailey Will Kemp Trevor White Val Kilmer Christian Slater |
| Distributed by | - USA - Dimension Films - non-USA - Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 2004 |
| Running time | 106 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $27 million |
| IMDb profile | |
Mindhunters is a 2004 thriller film, directed by Renny Harlin and written by Wayne Kramer and Kevin Brodbin (with an uncredited rewrite by Ehren Kruger). Unusually, the last country to receive this film was the United States in 2005, because of the film's distribution rights being changed from 20th Century Fox to Dimension Films.
The plot has striking similarities to Agatha Christie's novel And Then There Were None.
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[edit] Filming
Mindhunters was filmed entirely in The Netherlands. The locations in the Netherlands included Amsterdam-Noord, The Hague, Amsterdam, Delft, Radio Kootwijk, Veluwe, Gelderland, and Zandvoort. Post-production of the film was moved to England to decrease the budget. Filming and production went from January 2002 to September 2002, yet the film was not released until 2005. During the editing process, Harlin toned down much of the violence in order to secure a PG-13 rating, yet the MPAA felt that the overall tone of the film was too dark and still issued it an R; following this Harlin reinserted the deleted gore.
[edit] Plot summary
The titular Mindhunters are a group of young FBI students who are undergoing training as profilers. They are tasked by their instructor Jake Harris to travel to a small island off the coast of Virginia. This island is used as a training facility by the FBI and the military, and a mock town has been constructed there. Harris has arranged an elaborate training scenario for his students; they are to create a profile of a fictional sociopathic serial killer who has committed a murder there.
The students include Bobby (a young man with a talent for fixing things), Vince (a wheelchair-bound ex-cop who goes nowhere without his gun), Nicole (a smoker who is attempting to quit), Sara (A talented but un-confident profiler who is also petrified of drowning), Gabe (an outside observer), Rafe (who is very intelligent, caffeine-powered British investigator), Lucas (a supposedly fearless man whose parents were killed when he was a child), and J.D. (their leader).
Once they arrive at the island and settle in, they begin their investigation the following day. The group encounters an elaborate, Rube Goldberg-style trap; J.D.'s position of leadership prompts him to investigate it close-up, and the trap kills him via liquid nitrogen. Convinced that this wasn't an accident, the group heads to the dock to leave the island. Another trap is triggered, this one destroying the boat docked there. Tensions run high among the group, and they find messages from the killer that indicate when more victims will be killed.
Several more of the profilers are killed, in ways that correspond to their personalities: Rafe through his need for coffee (drugged; decapitated and drained of blood while unconscious); Bobby through his desire to repair things (harpooned by a device he triggered while trying to shut off a water valve); Nicole through her need for nicotine (after finding cigarettes in a vending machine, they turn out to be laced with a strong acid); and Vince through his need to have his gun handy (it had been rigged while he was unconscious to explosively misfire).
In between these events, the investigators use the resources at hand (including a fully-stocked forensics lab and computer database) to process the clues they have (including blood samples and an elaborate cypher, written in Rafe's blood). The results point to Sara, who denies being the killer; Lucas supports her, and suspicions seem to point to Gabe because of a map of the island found next to his bed. The remaining profilers elect to stick together, to keep an eye on each other. Later, Sara, Gabe and Lucas find Harris (who did not leave the island, though he led the profilers to believe that he had) and two other FBI agents next to him, all dead; Harris has been strung up to wires from the ceiling as a sort of marionette, just like the fake crime scene that they were to investigate. Outside, Gabe apparently shoots Lucas as Sara figures Gabe is the killer. This is fake, as Lucas set up triggers and placed squibs on his vest to simulate himself being shot. Lucas comes back and seemingly kills Gabe.
Sara explains to Lucas that she used her mind and remembered what Harris had always told her. She set a trap for the killer. Sara's trap then reveals that Lucas, not Gabe, is the killer. Lucas tells her that he set up the entire scenario, preparing the various traps ahead of time and while the rest of the group was unconscious from the drugged coffee. He claims that he did it all for infamy, as he did not gain any for killing his own parents as a child, and to prove he's smarter than the best.
Lucas then tries to drown Sara, but she manages to shoot him twice when Gabe acts as a distraction, finally killing him. The following day, Gabe and Sara are evacuated from the island.
[edit] Cast
- LL Cool J as Gabe Jensen.
- Jonny Lee Miller as Lucas Harper.
- Kathryn Morris as Sara Moore.
- Patricia Velásquez as Nicole Willis.
- Clifton Collins Jr. as Vince Sherman.
- Eion Bailey as Bobby Whitman.
- Will Kemp as Rafe Perry.
- Val Kilmer as Jake Harris.
- Christian Slater as J.D. Reston.
