There are projects that are doomed to begin with and there are those which go wrong towards the end and then there are those where you are left wondering as to why the output was below par when everything seemed okay. Well ’Murder by Numbers’ falls in the last category.
Its a about a battle of wits between two brilliant school boys and one police officer who is a shade smarter. The story begins when the body of a young woman is found dumped in a remote place with very few clues as to the identity of the assassin. The murder is perfect in all respects but there is something wrong... something that doesn’t fit with the experience of the investigating officer Cassie Mayweather (Bullock). The only clue of significance is a shoe print on the site that the police trace to a rich lad in the local highschool but the trail goes cold there when the chap denies having any hand in the thing and informs that he’d registered the complaint for his expensive shoes being stolen several weeks back. Police in the school campus spooks the school janitor, who disappears... its not clear why... the two boys (Ben (Kennedy) & Justin(Pitt)) who are the real culprits have primed up his house to make it look like he is the murderer... Then the two kill the janitor who already has a criminal record to close the case. However the movie doesn’t end there...
What begins as a promising thriller fizzles out somewhere in the middle. Cassies’ personal involvement (she had been a victim once) with the crime tires the viewers with un necessary parallels. If it was intended to increase the intensity of her character and the sharpness of the story, it achieves the exact opposite. The protagonist having an emotional baggage to overcome should have made her character more intense but unfortunately it fails miserably.
The two villains (supposedly evil geniuses) are two very different kind of people and yet held together by an inexplicable bond bordering on a gay relationship. their characters are not developed to the extent they make an impact, in fact towards the end you start having doubts if both are equally bad (if this was intentional the impact gets lost)
On the whole the movie is watchable though not very entertaining and eminently forgettable.