There are a couple of good reasons for a potential viewer to be reasonably excited about a viewing of The Bone Collector. Denzel Washington, one of Hollywood's most respected actors is in the lead role and Phillip Noyce who had provided such a rollicking thriller in Dead Calm is the director.

Add to that rising star Angelina Jolie, Michael Rooker and Queen Latifah (Queen of what one wonders?) each of who lend decent support. Poor Jolie is given the "plain Jane" treatment as a cop and purged of any glamour and made to wear the most masculine clothes. She does a solid job all the same.

The plot treads serial killer territory and is immediately reminiscent of David Fincher's Se7en which has clearly become the benchmark murder thriller that all directors have attempted to subsequently emulate. Once more, visual style is to the fore with countless shots of what look like out-takes from Se7en. The city is always dark and almost always suffering a downpour. It never stopped raining in Fincher's Seven.

Anyway, though predictable, the film moves along at a decent pace and is directed with a certain amount of flair. It is really the movie's risible finale that badly undermines what is otherwise a fairly decent effort. Noyce also doesn't seem to have been able to recapture that incredible tension and fear that he was able to do so marvelously in Dead Calm.

However the graphic violence and sick death scenes it doesn't make for particularly comfortable viewing. Washington is his reliable self, though a touch over exuberant and earnest. His effort shows and normally the mark of a good performance is to appear as effortless as could be. Jolie shows why she has recently bagged an Oscar for her work in Girl, Interrupted.

The plot is rather contrived and is many ways very predictable Hollywood serial killer turf. Mastermind sleuth Washington is fatally wounded during passionate duty and left virtually paralyzed, suffering from life threatening seizures when he gets too stressed or anxious. The audience is told that he has made a deal by which he is going to be allowed to pull the plug on his own life in the near future, as he has no desire to carry on in his crippled state.

At first, surprise, surprise he doesn't want to have anything to do with the Bone Collector case, but as always happens in these movies - he comes around, won over by a sense of duty and "doing the right thing". He is seriously bedridden however and he needs someone to be his senses as it were, and this is where rogue cop with attitude Jolie fits in.

Naturally the two of them don't hit it off at first…you can easily guess the rest. The climax of the film illustrates that the art of ending a film satisfactorily is as elusive is in the west as it is in the east. The Bone Collector, on the whole is another unmemorable clone of the far superior Se7en, yet it is infinitely superior to last years dire 8mm.