Seems like every time a new, novel, twisty-turny computer crime movie comes along, they insult our intelligence with displays of technological leaps most people can't even recognize as feasible. They would have us believe there isn't anything that can't be hacked, hijacked, taken over, or controlled by remote by any hacker with a laptop and a few server hops. In the meantime, we're subjected to a barrage of techno-babble so glossed-over, even the experts can't make heads or tails of it. We can't tell how logically sure-footed the movie is, we just know it sounds a lot like writers trying to be experts.

So goes Untraceable, the new Diane Lane thriller that really just wants to be an upscale version of Saw with perhaps a dash of Silence of the Lambs. Unfortunately, it fails on both fronts. Where Saw was unapologetic about its savage nature, Untraceable unsuccessfully hides its primal elements behind a veil of star power; where Silence of the Lambs was a character-driven exercise in perverse cinematic multi-tasking, Untraceable seems so single-minded about its outcome as to be about half boring. Even the more gruesome aspects of the plot (a man boiled alive in sulfuric acid, for instance) are executed with all the urgency of mowing the lawn, rendering what should be the script's pulse-pounding high points all but completely toothless.

Lane herself is all the sunshine she can be in an otherwise overcast film; the script doesn't allow for her full range of motion, which will cripple even the most brilliant actors' outings. If you're as technologically illiterate as the filmmakers expect you to be, you'll probably take most of the film's events for what they are and will therefore enjoy it more than most. On that front, any fan of Diane Lane will have a great time at the movies this weekend. Anyone looking for anything even remotely feasible need not apply. In the end, that's what this one will come down to.

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