The Bone Collector (1999)

There's a serial killer on the loose in New York and the police's best man has been severely injured during an enquiry. Now permanently disabled he starts the investigation from his bed along with the beautiful Amelia, a gifted rookie cop with an impressive arrest rate and discoverer of one of the previous victims. She becomes his eyes and ears on ground as she follows his instructions via a radio.

When the sadistic killer strikes, with each murder more gruesome than the last, he leaves a bizarre collection of clues which Lincoln has to fathom. Using his unique knowledge of forensic science he is soon on the killers trail. However, with more victims appearing without any success, Captain Howard Cheney takes them off the case forcing them to work alone. Using the clues collected it leads them to a book store and an early nineteenth century book ...

The picture is striking with a high bit transfer rate throughout. The Dolby sound is equally impressive, with the surround channels used extensively for the atmospheric sounds. However, the DTS soundtrack is simply stunning. By offering both Dolby and DTS, albeit with a lower 768kb/s to accommodate them both, we now have the opportunity to directly compare both soundtracks, and the result? DTS blows Dolby out of the window, road and country, it is awesome. If there were ever an excuse to update your system to accommodate DTS then now is the time.

It is exciting to see that Universal has decided to add a DTS soundtrack as well as the standard Dolby, indeed it is something that many other companies are set to follow. Surprisingly, there is still plenty of room on the disc for many useful extras plus DVD-ROM material, even if it is just a few web links.

It is an impressive thriller, and is certainly on par with Se7en. As usual, it is the person you least expect to be the killer, until all the pennies start to drop and it finally makes sense. Cue the final thrilling, edge of the seat, ending and a predictable slow motion finale. But hey, aren't all films predictable?!