(Movie)(Spoilers for Both Movie and Book)Along Came A Spider

[Ivy]

"They say that when I die, the case will die. They say it will be like a book I close. But the book, it will never close..."

Summary:
A girl is kidnapped from a school by one of the teachers. She turns out to be the daughter of a senator, and the kidnapper soon makes a call to a police officer whose partner died eight months ago, involving him in the kidnapping. One of the secret service people that failed to protect the girl at the school decides to help him. But not everything is what is seems, and many surprising twists follows as the two attempt to catch the spider.

Review:
Even at the end of the movie, the book is not closed. To play mind games with a Criminal Profiler like Alex Cross is asking for defeat. If you watch the first five minutes of the movie, you may want to turn it off because of the horrible CGI effects used during a car wreck, however, don't hit that eject or power button!!! After that horribly created and "accepted!" scene, the movie does a complete 180! You enter a world of games: a game that involves life or death, a cleverly designed plan, and a man who is trying to "Commit the crime of the Century". This movie is based off the real life events that took place in the early 1900s when the infant son of the notorious Charles Linbergh (First man to cross over the Atlantic) was kidnapped and "accidently" killed by a teenage boy. However, the kidnapper who took the little girl from school has no intentions on killing her, but a Secretary's daughter, she's not really important. But what is important is who she has connections with. This movie is based off the "National Bestseller Along Came A Spider by James Patterson". If you love the movie, don't read the book! The book is by far so much greater than the movie, and really, they have no relations to one another.So chose one or the other, I chose both, and now I can't stand to watch the movie even though it, itself, is incredible...

Trivia Time:
1.)Along Came a Spider (2001) was made after Kiss the Girls (1997). But in the books, Along Came a Spider was set before Kiss the Girls.
2.)This story takes place over the course of a few days. In the novel that the film is based on, the story takes place over the course of around two years. Also, in the book, Alex Cross is 38 years old with two kids, where as in the film he is in his mid to late fifties.
3.)The scene where Alex Cross pays the kidnapper by throwing the bag containing the ransom from the window of a transit train is taken from James Patterson novel 'Roses are red' which starred Alex Cross investigating another of his "best enemies", "The Mastermind".
This next 'bonus' trivia contains a huge SPOILER for both the Movie and the Novel. Only continue to read at your own risk (hahahahahahahaha)
4.)Substantial changes were made from the book on which the movie is based. In the books, the Gary Soneji story continues for four books (Along Came A Spider, Kiss the Girls, Jack and Jill, and finally to his demise in Cat and Mouse). In the Movie he dies due to a Shotgun wound to the abdomen after trying to kill Alex Cross and Jezzie Flannigan. He dies under entirely different circumstances in the Book. Also, there are two kids kidnapped in the book at the Private School, one of which dies in the process and is sodimized and mutilated (Now you know why they didn't add that little detail in the Movie, this results in Jezzie Flannigan's execution via lethal injection.

Added Bonus: Goofs in the Movie
1.)National Cathedral School, the place of the kidnapping, is a girls-only school, not a co-ed school.
2.)When Alex accesses Jezzie's computer he is prompted for a password. When he enters the password we see the actual characters he is typing where in actual fact, most Windows-based programmes would only display a line of asterisks.
3.)The U.S. Secret Service does not protect Senators and their families. The Secret Service only protects the Presidents, former Presidents, Presidential Candidates, and visiting Heads of State.
4.)When Sonji strangles the woman in the office, she is supposed to be dead but when they show her she is blinking.
(Teaching-Lesson Goof)5.)The Turkish shotgun makes the sound of a pump-action shotgun, despite the fact that it is a double-barreled, break-action gun.

[Ivy]

I chose I didn't know. There are several reasons why I'm undecided. In the movie, it's hinted at several times that there might be a liking or "sexual" interest between the two characters. However, in the book, Alex completely falls head-over-heels for Jezzie and takes her to the Caribbean and they meet at hotels' for One-Night-Flings on more than one occassion. If this was added into the movie, it would take away from the plot. However, they way the character's give "subtle hints", on more than one occassion, makes you upset that something doesn't occur. However, it's after Soneji's death that Alex realizes Jezzie's involvement and in the end, kills her with a single shot through the heart. In the book, they go back to the Caribbean's where Alex gets her to confess, in which she is brought back to the US and convicted of several crimes, and she recieves the Death Penalty due to the death of one of the kidnapped children. In the movie, there's only one child kidnapped, and an attempted kidnapping. And the child doesn't die or get hurt in any serious manner, except psychologically; so on what accounts could she recieve the death penalty? And it's not like she'd confess her involvement to Alex, they're not really "partners", so...yeah. There's just a whole bunch of questions that don't have answers, and it'd really be a hard "Subject" to "turn and twist" into scenes in the Movie...