The shocking case of the so-called "Beltway sniper" is dramatized in such a manner that you never really feel too connected to any of the main characters, but you do get a sense of the urgency for the investigators and the indescribable horror it must have been for the people in the area.
In the case of 'Charles Moose' (Charles S. Dutton) I wish we could have gotten more under the skin of this very complex and fascinating chief of police. In real life, I remember watching him deliver all those press-conferences when it all happened, and how he gave an impression of being a very dedicated law-officer who truly lived up to the line "to protect and serve". Naturally I therefore hoped this film would give a better understanding of what makes this man tick, but it didn't really. This is no fault on Charles S. Dutton, a very fine actor, but more on the writers.
On the other hand, the fact that we never get to know what makes the main characters act as they do, makes the portrayal of the two snipers even scarier. It's like Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds", the movie ends without us knowing what triggered all the bird attacks, and the fact that we don't get the answers we so desperately seek, add to the horror. Especially when the crimes in question are so horrific as they are here. Here we have two human-beings who really act like the world was their personal playground and the taking of human lives nothing worse than the actions in a video game. We will probably never get any real answer from the "lead" sniper John Allen Muhammad, as he was sentenced to death earlier this year, and considering the horror he bestowed upon America, it is not likely he will spend time on death row long enough to help give us an answer to the mystery.
This movie dramatizes these perverse killings and it's grand-scale investigation in a straight-forward-manner that works, mostly thanks to the fact that this case is so dramatic to begin with that the film-makers really couldn't mess it up in the first place. As a matter of fact it is so harrowing that the movie itself leaves the viewer more disturbed than "entertained".
Nice world we live in, huh?
