THE TRAVELER

A drifter (Kilmer) walks into a police dept. and confesses to 6 murders...before they have happened. The idea for this movie is very cool and I was actually excited to see a Val Kilmer movie again. Once again though he let me down. This is not anywhere close to the crap he has been coming out with for the last 10 years or so, this one had so much potential but never really got going. When the drifter starts to confess to a murder someone in the police station mysteriously dies in the same manner as the confession (sounds cool right). The problem is that this movie just felt like it was trying to get really good and never got the push it needed. If they would have cut a half hour out of it and did it as a TV show in the vain of CSI or Detroit 187 it would have been great. Too many flashbacks and repeating the same conversations over and over again made the movie feel flat and left me wanting more from it. Don't get me wrong, it's not terrible but it could have been SO much better. I give it a C+.

Would I watch again? - Probebly Not

They clearly blew the whole budget in hiring Val Kilmer, who barely acts. He seems like he's half asleep the entire movie. Absolutely no emotion shown -- and not in a good, creepy way, but just boring. He has like 13 lines in the whole movie but is onscreen plenty. Most of the time he's whistling some sort of funeral dirge. It's clear they put it in as many times as they could, as they did the flashback scenes. They show a lame, grainy, unconvincing 'torture' scene about 7-8 times. Really.

The plot is predictable at best, incoherent at worst or perhaps more accurately. The ending makes no sense. It also ends suddenly with no real resolution.

Another lame fact is that it is shot in some old, crumbling building for no reason other than to be vaguely creepy, and it's all old cars and stuff parked outside, for god knows what reason, as it is set in a contemporary setting.

I could go on but there's really no point. If you were thinking of renting or buying this, DO NOT. It is a turd, ladies and gentlemen.

The movie was like a Freddy or Jason film. You know who the killer is, who is going to die and why they are going to die. The film starts out with a girl, Mary Black being abducted while out in the woods skipping rope and playing with her kitty, Shining. Don't worry, if you miss this scene they will show it 3-4 more times. She manages to get out very loud screams even though the killer has his hand over her mouth.

We flash ahead 1 year later, Christmas Eve at a small town police department. Detective Alexander Black was the father of Mary and is having some family problems mainly over the death of Mary a year ago. Then at 8:14 Val Kilmer shows up as "Mr. Nobody" to confess to murders. Val has the eerie appearance of an old fat Jim Morrison and recites various dark lines and truisms such as "It is the job of the police to protect the rich and persecute the poor." He also has his own music as he whistles Mozart, which sounds a little like the opening of "Lassie" for you old timers.

The soundtrack is a combination of Mozart and Metal. It was good, but it really had an opportunity to make the film. We soon find out that the cops who are on duty had clubbed a drifter into a coma attempting to get him to confess to the killing of Mary Black. They show the torture scene about 6 times. The drifter (never called The Traveler, perhaps "Drifter" was already taken) was beaten with a shovel, baton, fist, hung, whipped, and suffocated. Oh yes and stuck with a pen.

Our Traveler is here to get revenge in a strange and supernatural way, which the police quickly figure out. As he confesses to a killing, he is actually describing how a police officer is being killed.

I found the movie to be "Twilight Zone-like" at times, and Kilmer, attempting to be the new thinking man's Freddy. His slow monotone speeches are reminiscent of his Morrison readings. I saw this as a film version of dark poetry with cult status potential.

No sex. No nudity. Does contain blood, guts and torture.