This movie is practically the textbook example of incompetent filmmaking. If some grotesque experiment in metaphysics could anthropomorphize the phrase "incompetent filmmaking", the resultant creature would be some misshapen combination of writer Alex Metcalf and director Jeremy Haft. It would probably have two heads, no brains and no balls.
Don't get me wrong. I've seen films that are much, muuuuuch worse than The Crimson Code. However, I've never seen the makings of a perfectly fine story as horribly mangled and shoddily stitched together as what Metcalf and Haft crapped out with this movie. It's almost like a more talented person came up with the outline of this tale and then Metcalf and Haft killed that person, stole the outline for themselves and filled it out into a full script by stuffing it full of their own stinking, creative pus.
FBI agents James Chandler and Stephanie Dobson (Patrick Muldoon and Cathy Moriarty) are on the trail of a serial killer called "The Silencer", because he cuts out women's tongues. They haven't had a lot of success and find themselves shut out of the elite serial killer-hunting Red Team headed up by their boss, William Haywood (Tim Thomerson). But when Chandler and Dobson are called to an accident scene where the victim turns out to be a wanted serial killer, Chandler notices something. It's a clue that he follows up on with the help of his now-wheelchair bound mentor, Randall Brooks (Fred Ward), and eventually leads him to conclude that there's someone out there murdering serial killers. Dobson scoffs at his theory, but Haywood is impressed enough to invite Chandler and Dobson to join Red Team on the apprehension of another serial killer. While on the mission, Dobson ends up getting taken hostage and Chandler has to shoot the escaping killer dead.
Haywood is so impressed with Chandler that he makes him a part of Red Team, breaking up his partnership with Dobson. That frees up them to jump into bed together. While all that's going on, Chandler continues his search for "The Silencer" and focuses on a local florist named J. B. Gaines (C. Thomas Howell). But after another mission where he sees Red Team essentially murder a pedophile kidnapper, Chandler begins to suspect his new associates are the ones killing serial killers. He recruits Dobson and Brooks to help him get the evidence to arrest Haywood and Red Team, even taking his theory to the director of the FBI.
But then J.B. Gaines, who turns out to really be "The Silencer", lures Chandler into a trap where the FBI agent ends up killing an innocent man. Red Team captures Gaines but then turns on Chandler and tries to kill him. He escapes, finds Brooks killed and runs to Dobson for help. It turns out Dobson has been working for Haywood this whole time and betrays Chandler. Red Team locks Chandler and Gaines inside a burning building and leaves them to die. The FBI agent and the serial killer escape and team up to take down Haywood, Dobson and the rest.
Now, that may not be the greatest story ever told. But you have to admit, those are the basic building blocks of a fun and exciting little thriller. Writer Metcalf and director Haft unfortunately take those blocks and build a movie that doesn't have a single once of fun or a solitary moment of excitement. These losers took a pretty good idea for a movie, digested it and then filmed the stuff that leaked out their collective anus.
To start with, the dialog is so bland and uninvolving that it makes me think "Alex Metcalf" isn't a human being but one of those chess-playing computers that was programmed to write a screenplay. If you took a band of hobos and had them do their own improv version of Macbeth, they'd come up with better dialog than what you hear in this film. There's also so little realism in the portrayal of FBI agents and how they do their work, it appears the only research done for this film was watching commercials for upcoming episodes of the TV show Criminal Minds.
The Crimson Code also lacks any sense of mystery or suspense. The closest it comes to generating any tension is playing hard rock music while people are walking around. And it's hard to keep the audience guessing when the movie hands out every answer before you even realize there's a question.
The direction of Haft is just as fumbling as the writing of Metcalf. He doesn't know where to put the camera. He doesn't know where to put his actors. He doesn't know how to start a scene or how to end one. His attempts at fight scenes and love scenes are so uninspired that I suspect Haft is a pacifist virgin. His visual storytelling has the subtlety of a rock thrown through a window and flows like molasses in Antarctica.
Considering they're trying to do the acting equivalent of starting a fire with damp newspaper and a rubber chicken, these performers do as fine a job as could be expected. At least they manage to get through all these terrible scenes without bursting into laughter or tears. Cathy Moriarty must have come close to sobbing when she watched this thing, having to look at herself with so much bad make-up caked on her face she resembles nothing so much as a middle-aged woman pathetically trying to shave 15 years off her age. C. Thomas Howell does get a little annoying, playing his role of serial killer as if he were Snidely Whiplash from the old Dudley Do-right cartoons.
If I ever win the lottery, I'll be sorely tempted to remake The Crimson Code. There's the blueprint here for a good-to-middling little movie. Besides, even if I turned it into a musical and cast sheep in all the non-speaking roles
it couldn't be any worse than the original.
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