First out: "The Traveler"

"The Traveler" is a promising horror/thriller featuring the great Val Kilmer, but in my opinion it never quite reaches its heights, or I suppose it could have, if it didn't mess up in certain areas.

 The movie starts out in a police station a dark and rainy christmas night, where six police officers are on duty. Before long, the cop in the reseption desk area gets startled by a longhaired man in a black coat that claims he's there to turn himself in for murder. Talked to, the stranger doesn't say much, and disturbed by his manner and mystic behavior, the cop calls his superior saying he's got a man down at the entrance hall claming to be a murderer.

Val Kilmer's character eventually presents himself as Mr. Nobody, and little things, like the time he showed up and his name choice brings to the minds of the officers a much darker incident featuring all six of them. Realising he's the innocent guy they tortured that night they're all trying to forget, coming back to revenge his death, an intense race against certain death begins.

The Characters
Val Kilmers character is with out a doubt the stand out character in the movie, and its actually working perfectly. His cold, laid back and mysterious, yet in-your-face presence along with his ability to show up in the most unexpected places, is the main thing that got my hopes up that this movie would be the one worth all the hours of pining through countless of unoriginal and badly produced horror movies. The way they make him walk the prison hallways with such grace, whilst whistling the death tune in a rather psychotic manner also gives the movie a rather creepy and eerie feeling, but from there it just simply stops.

The police officers lack of depth, and what sympathy I had for the cop that lost his daughter, vanished the moment I saw the torture scenes form that night where they tortured what they thought was the daughters murderer. This would have worked, of course, if the purpose was for us to sympathize with Mr. Nobody and his innocence, and understand the need for revenge.

The Killing
Mr. Nobodys confession to no less than six murders, turns out to be the killing of the six cops in question, and the director wants us to enjoy the killings in full. Therefore the killing scenes are made macabre, visual and longlasting to the point where you just want them to get on with the bloody movie, already! The killing scenes literally helps the movie to die a slow and painfull death, and if I did take it seriously at one point, I'm struggling now half way through the killings.

The torturing scene of the persumingly innocent drifter is also too brutal and longlasting, that it doesn't compliment the movies over all feel and makes it to painfull to watch. By this time, I really felt the cops  got what's coming to them and had lost all empathy I ever had for any of the cops.

All in all and Spoiler Alert(!!!)
The movie would have worked out alright, if the purpose was for us to have sympathy for the innocent Mr. Nobody and praise his victory. Heck, it would even have worked that Mr. Nobody was guilty and just was the psychotic killer coming back to kill his own torturing murderers. All would have been forgiven, if they had just stopped right there, if it hadn't been for the turn of events that the movie continued a little bit longer, presenting for us how the murdered daughter's spirit was still hanging around, telling her father Mr. Nobodys secret: All you have to do to concour him is to say his name!

And with a few yellings of his name, the cop managed to blow Mr. Nobody across the room so that he vanished for good, and could help his daughter find the light.

And I sat there as the screen went black, like so many times before, asking myself: What the hell was the point of that??