Mindhunters |  | Director: Renny Harlin
Actors: Eion Bailey, Clifton Collins Jr., Will Kemp, Val Kilmer, Jonny Lee Miller
Category: DVD
This item is no longer available
Rating:  103 reviews
Format: Ntsc
Rating: R (Restricted)
ASIN: B00005JMU7
Theatrical Release Date: May 13, 2005
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com
Creepy, tense, and enigmatic, Renny Harlin's Mindhunters is a grisly cross between Agatha Christie's whodunit classic And Then There Were None and Jonathan Demme's horrifying The Silence of the Lambs. An interesting ensemble cast, including Christian Slater (Windtalkers), Jonny Lee Miller (Melinda and Melinda), L.L. Cool J (Harlin's Deep Blue Sea), and Kathryn Morris (television's Cold Case) portray promising FBI profilers-in-training. Val Kilmer plays their ambiguous instructor putting the candidates through their paces and leaving them for a weekend on a spooky island, where those who survive a terrifying exercise--penetrating the mind of a serial killer via elaborate clues--will go to the head of the class. The rules change, however, when the students themselves turn out to be victims, bumped off one after another, the survivors half-mad with suspicion and paranoia that the murderer is one of their own. The film's concept is sound even if the execution (so to speak) gets out of hand with problems of logic. Among other things, none of these characters could possibly find time to pull off some of the psychopath's more complicated killing rituals. Quibbles aside, however, Mindhunters is particularly watchable if one is in the mood for a movie that plays mind games. --Tom Keogh
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| Customer Reviews: Read 98 more reviews...
 If you like root canal, then you will enjoy this one. June 24, 2009
shalLOwgroUnD (Nor Cal)
Having seen this load of "@#$!", I am surprised this many people actually reviewed
it. Just kidding. It wasn't that bad, however, the acting was average, the stunts were
mostly computer gen, except for one scene of the most fittest middle aged black man
on screen to date(LL Cool J) in a fist fight with either Slater, or Johnny Lee Miller(sorry I
can't even remember that much of the plot, as there wasn't many memorable scenes
that I could recall).
And Val K. looks like he(excuse the pun) "telephoned in his acting").
The settings were the norm, the usual settings for people being
stalked,killed,maimed,mutilated(eg old abandoned warehouses).
I have to admit the music kept it on the edge and suspenseful.
The special effects were kind of cool. I won't give away any key
points, but the effects were generally minimal, with some nice computer
generated effects, and traditional hollywood effects (except for a
couple of cool Saw-type effects tricks, nothing real unusual was
done).
The actors themselves were along for the ride , almost like the first
Alien movie where the actors had no clue what is going to happen in some
scenes (thanks to the sneaky tactics/directing of the movie director.
And the plot is somewhat predictable as most of Rennie Harlins
movies have been in the past(eg. Die Hard 2, Cliffhanger, that Pirate
movie).
Here are a couple of other movies that I suggest if you want good
character development and these are:
-Identity
-Copycat
-Secret Window
-Panic Room.
Also, please watch any of these old classic ones from the
past which are great movies:
-Ten Little Indians
-The Cat and the Canary
-Clue
-The House on Haunted Hill(The original version with Vincent Price please)
Other Rennie Harlin movies with better plot and less cheese:
-"The Long Kiss Goodnight"
-Exorcist: The Beginning (Directing after director Frankenheimmer died, which was a remake of a superior version by Paul Schrader : Dominion: A
Prequel to The Exorcist.
-"Cliffhanger"
 Poor Remake of Agatha Christie plot May 21, 2009
Glenn Gallagher (Sacramento, CA)
Mind Hunters is a poor remake of the film "And Then There Were None", based on Agatha Christie's mystery novel "Ten Little Indians".
Mind Hunters is poorly acted, the action is contrived, and the result is one very bad film. If you do like thrillers, I'd recommend viewing the original film "And Then There Were None", or a more modern classic such as "Silence of the Lambs".
A complete waste of my time, not to mention an entire Netflix pick.
2.5 stars out of 4 December 28, 2008
One-Line Film Reviews (Ann Arbor)
The Bottom Line:
Mindhunters is enjoyable enough and quick-moving but exceptionally contrived; the fun of this type of movie should be to guess the killer, but when the answer is arbitrary anyway (something like 3 endings were shot) the movie loses its reason for being.
 Highly entertaining November 24, 2008
Bradley F. Smith (Miami Beach, FL)
LL Cool J shows his acting chops, but this is a director's movie all the way. Very stylized and dark. Great special effects, slow motion, weird camera angles. It's a cat and mouse game, hide and seek. You'll wonder who the real killer is all the way to the end, and you'll still have your doubts. It's gory, but not stomach churning, somehow. I'd never heard of this and it makes a worthwhile rental for a night.
 Mind Hunters November 6, 2007
H. Frick (Boulder, CO United States)
This movie is trying way too hard to be clever and stylish.
On the clever side, it fails badly with all the logic mistakes. There is no way that any of the FBI trainees could have set up these elaborate traps on the fly. Then, while these are highly trained profilers, once under pressure, they stop doing their highly sophisticated profiler talk and instead fall back into the stereotype Hollywood movie trapped prey behavior of shutting off their brain and just accusing the next person of being the killer without thought or reason.
On the stylish side, I thought the soundtrack was getting in the way of making this a serious suspense movie, instead turning it into an MTV extreme sport feature. Val Kilmer and Christian Slater have actually very short appearances in this film, maybe they thought it better to leave the sinking ship. The remaining actors are mostly two-dimensional, and instead of acting scared (which they should have been) or at least disturbed, they mostly go their ways like it is still an exercise and they will come out unscathed.
If the traps hadn't been so elaborate (and thus unbelievable), this could have been decent entertainment. If the music had been more supporting of the moods, the stylish factor would have been adequate. If the actors had been reacting like humans, this could have risen beyond B material.
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