Murder By Numbers

Rating: 3.5/5

Murder By Numbers isn't by any stretch the greatest film of its' type, but most certainly not the worst.

Looking at Richard Haywood (Ryan Gosling) and Justin Pendleton (Michael Pitt), you wouldn't think they'd have anything in common. Richard is arrogant, attractive, and popular. Justin is reserved, intelligent, and generally pushed around by Richard and his friends. However they may look from the outside, both boys share the same desire; to commit the perfect murder.

When Justin and Richard get together to complete their crime, their collective egos have them thinking that their cleverness and carefulness should make their planned homicide be impossible to figure out by anyone but themselves, but what they didn't expect was for homicide detective Cassie Mayweather (Sandra Bullock) to be put on the case. With Cassie's determination and skill, Justin and Richard will have to work harder than expected to execute their perfect crime.

When getting ready to rewatch Murder By Numbers, out of curiosity, I looked at the reviews that were written upon the film's initial release. Once I read them, I was surprised to discover how negative they were. This movie is in no way flawless, but I don't think it is as bad as past critics would have you believe. If you are someone who finds interest or enjoyment in a crime thriller, than it is pretty easy to like Murder By Numbers. It does feel at times like it is stuck in the middle of being a really well acted Lifetime movie and a film made for theaters, but even so, it is still better than a lot of the generic thrillers that come out on a yearly basis.

Sandra Bullock is commonly cast as a tom-boy/tough girl character. If you don't agree, see Miss Congeniality, The Heat, Oceans 8 and more. Though it may seem like she is being type cast, she doesn't let her characters blend into one another. Even though her role as Cassie Mayweather in Murder By Numbers and Gracie Hart in Miss Congeniality are both members of law enforcement, they are very different in the way she portrays them on screen. Cassie is a character with a very troubled past, and even if Murder By Numbers does a rough job at trying to disperse her violent history into the current timeline of the plot, it still adds a somewhat realistic edge to her character. Bullock is believable as a tough as nails detective, and as she's zeroing on her target, it is clear to see why one would not want to be the criminal on the other end.

I don't claim to know the first thing about the actual science behind forensics, but what I like about Murder By Numbers is that it is more than just a cat and mouse storyline. There's quiet moments of planning and figuring for both the detectives and the criminals, and I personally find those scenes to be more unsettling than ones just filled with gratuitous violence. The fact that the two killers in the film choose their victim at random and go through the details so thoroughly, just puts a small thought in your mind about how little we know about the strangers we pass on a daily basis. Granted, the majority of those we meet at random aren't likely planning a highly violent and illegal crime, but the film's general content is still off-putting enough to let your imagination get the better of you and have your fears linger in your mind during the movie and for a short while after.

Though I would never say that Murder By Numbers is a excellent film, I would never call it bad. It's definitely a product of its' time, but is still intriguing enough to be rewatched almost two decades later.