On the Big Board |
Position |
Staff |
In Brief |
147/166 |
David Mumpower |
Yeesh, enough with the twists. It offers enough red herrings for an Iron Chef battle. By the way, they all suck. |
This film could have been pitched as Silence of the Lambs meets Ten Little Indians. The mindhunters of the title are an elite group FBI psychological profiler trainees who are isolated on an island to solve a mock crime as part of their training. The only problem is that one of the trainees is actually a serial killer, and now he or she has been trained in the FBI’s most advanced crime solving techniques. No one is aware of this, of course, until they start dropping one by one, and the training exercise is turned into on the job training.
The premise shows potential as suspense thrillers and serial killers are generally popular genres and topics, respectively, and the plot description suggests that it should be a smart thriller. Of course, execution doesn’t always match potential, and in this case because the characters are supposed to be specially trained, any dumbing down or ridiculously stupid actions by people leading to their deaths will be more glaring in this case.
Renny Harlin has been hit and miss, but even his hits have been more straight ahead action films, so there is some doubt that he can handle the subtlety of a psychological thriller. Val Kilmer and Christian Slater, long since moved on to the veteran actor category, lead a mostly young cast. Kilmer and Slater are also quite a bit removed from their biggest box office successes as well, which also leaves the film without a proven box office draw and forces the film to rely on its merits alone. (Dan Krovich/BOP)
January 13, 2004 Less than two weeks before scheduled release, Dimension has pulled Mindhunters from the schedule again. The studio is contractually obligated to give this title at least a token release, but at this point, it might as well be straight-to-video as it has zero studio support. (Kim Hollis/BOP)
Comparison films for Mindhunters |
Title |
Date |
Opening |
Adjusted Opening |
Screens |
PSA |
Adj PSA |
Total BO |
Adjusted Total |
Mult |
Deep Blue Sea |
7/30/99 | 19.11 |
22.77 |
2854 |
6696.00 |
7645.0 |
73.65 |
87.76 |
3.54 |
Six Days, Seven Nights |
6/12/98 | 16.49 |
21.20 |
2550 |
6467.00 |
7997.6 |
74.31 |
95.54 |
4.51 |
Kiss the Girls |
10/3/97 | 13.22 |
17.36 |
2271 |
5821.00 |
7355.5 |
60.50 |
79.47 |
4.58 |
Long Kiss Goodnight, The |
10/11/96 | 10.18 |
13.88 |
2245 |
4535.00 |
5950.9 |
33.45 |
45.63 |
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Seven Years in Tibet |
10/10/97 | 10.02 |
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2103 |
4765.00 |
6021.1 |
37.91 |
49.80 |
3.78 |
Murder By Numbers |
4/19/02 | 9.31 |
9.67 |
2642 |
3495.00 |
3495.0 |
31.87 |
33.13 |
3.42 |
Watcher, The |
9/8/00 | 9.06 |
10.13 |
2742 |
3304.00 |
3555.3 |
28.93 |
32.36 |
3.19 |
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