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# ‘Mindhunters’ could give you brain damage at the box office
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/mindhunters-could-give-you-brain-damage-at-the-box-office/
- Published: 2005-05-13T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T07:07:14.000Z
- Author: Dan Dunn
- Tags: Entertainment, Santa Monica, #archive-import

“Mindhunters” is a curious title for a film directed by Renny Harlin considering the Finnish director’s filmography — riddled with dreck such as “The Adventures of Ford Fairlane,” “Driven,” “Exorcist: The Beginning” and “Deep Blue Sea” — is testament to a dogged, career-long pursuit of brainless material. Here, Harlin’s dumbed it again with a whodunit inspired by Agatha Christie’s “Ten Little Indians.” “Mindhunters” is an ill-fated attempt to meld the cutting edge forensics of “CSI” with the unsettling murkiness of “Seven.” Among the film’s numerous shortcomings are a lame-brained script and a conspicuous dearth of interesting characters. Christian Slater, Val Kilmer, LL Cool J and Kathryn Morris (“Cold Case”) are the principal players in a story about a group of eight would-be FBI profilers whose training exercise on a remote island turns out to be more than a simulation. Yep, a real serial killer is on the loose, and no one is above suspicion.

Harlin and scribes Wayne Kramer and Kevin Brodbin invite us to freely suspend disbelief throughout, most notably with the film’s dubious core proposition: That someone from the group of trainees, all of whom seem to have been plucked from an Abercrombie & Fitch catalogue, is actually an evil genius with an unquenchable thirst for gore. Granted, the American intelligence community has some problems, but could the agent screening process really be this porous? Harlin attempts to draw attention away from gaping holes in logic with some spectacularly elaborate death scenes that, while occasionally clever, tend to be more puzzling than effective … unless you happen to be the sort who always suspected dominoes could kill. Then there’s this, from the “Things That Make You Go Hmm …” file: “Mindhunters” sat on a shelf at Miramax/Dimension for more than two years and is just now being released in the wake of the departure of studio chiefs Bob and Harvey Weinstein. (Rated R for violence/strong graphic images, language and sexual content. Running time: 106 minutes)

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 13, 2005.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/051305.pdf?ref=smdp.com)