The Bone Collector

In Phillip Noyce’s film what puts Lincoln Rhyme in that bed is not a stroke but an accident; in Jeffery Deaver’s novel an oak beam falls on him at a crime scene and crushes his fourth cervical vertebra. Rhyme never leaves one room and works the scenes through a video and audio link Amelia carries. These are not two officers on a radio: one can look but not read, the other can read but not look. A second clock runs from the start. Rhyme has arranged to end his life, fearing seizures that would leave him in a vegetative state, and the case keeps postponing it. The production was itself a bargain. The studio wanted Harrison Ford, Sean Connery, Demi Moore or Nicole Kidman; Noyce held out for Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, telling Universal he would pay any overage himself and keep half of any saving. It came in about 1.5 million dollars under. Jeremy Iacone’s script cut the novel to three murders, and the killer’s job and motive were changed from the book. Washington prepared by meeting quadriplegics, Christopher Reeve among them. A good fit if you want a thriller that hands seeing to one character and reading to another. Not for viewers who cannot take the killings laid out in detail.