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■pi I Movies II I 'Bone Collector' disappointing Denzel Washington and Angelina Jolie star in Universal Studios’ “The Bone Collector* by David Germain Associated Press What caliber of serial killer leaves an elaborately fiendish trail of bodies (and parts) that confounds the cops, yet ends up a bumbling milquetoast of a murder er in the final showdown with the good guys? That’s the disappointing conclusion to “The Bone Collector,” Hollywood’s latest entry in the bulk-meat butcher shop of horrors. Unlike “The Silence of the Lambs” and “Seven,” whose gore-minded villains met their makers with the same aplomb they applied to their misdeeds, the mass murderer of “The Bone Collector” finishes as a half-wit who seemingly couldn’t plot the demise of a litter of kittens. The film stars Denzel Washington as Lincoln Rhyme, a New York City de tective who’s an expert on evidence gathering, and Angelina Jolie as uniformed officer Amelia Donaghy, his reluctant protege. Through an accident on the job, Rhyme has lost the use of his arms and legs and, ultimately, his will to live. Bedridden in his apartment and plagued by palsied fits, Rhyme secures a promise from a doctor friend to help him make the “final transition” rather than wait around for the seizure that will leave him with the IQ of a cinderblock. When Donaghy stumbles on agruesomely choreographed murder scene, with telltale clues such as a finger hacked off the corpse, detectives are baffled and seek Rhyme’s expertise. Impressed by Donaghy’s quick work to preserve and docu ment the crime scene, Rhyme insists that she handle the forensics inspections when more bodies (and parts) start piling up. Though Donaghy is tuned into Rhyme’s steady voice and guidance by a headset, it’s a laughable leap that the NYPD would stand aside and let an amateur lumber over such delicate murder scenes. Were all the other detectives with an ounce of forensics experience on vaca tion that week? Wouldn’t a rookie forensics investigator have served the plot as well as a rookie beat cop with nothing more than police-academy knowledge of crime-scene detection? The killer plots an intricate spate of slayings, death by scalding steam, death by rats, death by high tide. The anatomically explicit murders seem devilishly inspired, cut from the same corpse as the savage mutilations in “Silence of the Lambs.” Yet, in the end, it happens that the research to carry out the murders was cribbed from a single obscure book called “The Bone Collector,” which recounts grisly New York stories of killings past. That’s the first sign that Rhyme and Donaghy’s adversary might be on a par with a high-school kid who leaves a term paper till the last minute, then filches the whole thing from the Encyclopaedia Britannica. And when the killer’s identity is revealed in a blundering battle with Rhyme, the likely audience reaction is not going to be gasps and shudders but exclama tions of, “That clown?”