Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector Premiere Review

Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector premieres Friday, January 10 on NBC. [poilib element="accentDivider"] Whisking us back to the '90s heyday of elaborate serial killer "cat and mouse" games, which began as a gourmet meal with The Silence of the Lambs and then devolved into fast-food fare with Striking Distance, Kiss the Girls, Copycat, The Watcher, and many more (it's the genre David Fincher's Se7en knowingly knocked on its ass), Lincoln Rhyme: Hunt for the Bone Collector brings, arguably, the most ridiculous of all these tales to TV. Based on the first Lincoln Rhyme novel by Jeffery Deaver, which was previously turned into a perfectly passable movie starring Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie, The Bone Collector is bananas. It features a hyper-brilliant, bedridden forensic investigator being pitted against a genius killer who leaves clues so onerous and vague that they can only be solved by Holmes-ian intellect possessed by someone who relishes the thrill of the solving perplexing puzzles. "Everything means something with the Bone Collector" is a quote that's equal parts intriguing and exhausting. Obviously, this type of killer doesn't exist. It's a pure construct of paperbacks and the movies based on those paperbacks. These are glossy, sanitized murders devoid of deviant sexual pleasure. No, for a real peek inside the minds of serial murderers, outside of a true-crime docu-series, you'll have to check out Netflix's Mindhunter. This show is pure popcorn. And that's not necessarily a bad thing if you're looking for fast-paced pulp. [widget path="global/article/imagegallery" parameters="albumSlug=lincoln-rhyme-hunt-for-the-bone-collector-pilot-photos&captions=true"] Some tweaks had to be made to the story to slide it into a TV setting - the biggest being that Lincoln Rhyme and his bone collecting adversary go way back. In fact, it was three years before our story begins that Rhyme was paralyzed while trying to save one of the Collector's victims. Obviously, in both the book and the movie, the Bone Collector, in different ways, is revealed to have some connection to Rhyme but here they've turned him into our hero's Moriarty. We even get to see him in action, played by Brian F. O'Byrne. The smallest, and funniest, change from the books seems to be that the Bone Collector now collects bones, and torments Rhyme, because Rhyme was briefly rude to him a decade earlier. For wrestling fans, this is the "cup of coffee spilled on Kane" start of a feud. Speaking of Moriarty, the series doesn't hide its newly adopted Sherlock-ian sheen. Holmes himself, as a literary character, is directly discussed during flashbacks to Rhyme's elite forensic academy schooling. And when Rhyme, played capably and grouchily by Grimm's Russell Hornsby, puts his talents for observation to work, we get a slew of imagery and graphics letting us know that his crime-busting brain is working overtime. None of this is terrible, but it's also not great. It's just a slick superhero story nestled nicely into network TV. [ignvideo url="https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/01/08/netflixs-locke-key-season-1-official-trailer"] Arielle Kebbel (The Vampire Diaries, Midnight Texas) plays Rhyme's newly-recruited eyes and ears and legs, beat cop Amelia Sachs (the character gets to keep her book name, which was changed for the movie). The basic dynamic between Rhyme and Sachs is a solid one, with the ornery veteran molding and scolding a keen apprentice, and Kebbel is very good, but things get so rushed due to pilot-itis that Rhyme is already cracking smiles and warming up to Sachs by the time the credits roll. Sure, for the movie it takes the entire runtime, but the show should have sat with Rhyme's bitterness a bit longer. I suppose it doesn't help that this Rhyme isn't in as much of a rock bottom mindset as the original version. This Rhyme actually has people he cares about and he actually might walk someday. It's a far cry from the Rhyme at the beginning of the old story who was entertaining the thought of medically-assisted suicide. A man whose anger you could understand a bit more clearly when it came to him lashing out at others. This Rhyme was apparently a prick even before he was paralyzed. It's just his way.