And Cindy is, to put it mildly, a handful. She has a pimp (played by 50 Cent, who also is one of the producers of the film), but things have gone south in that relationship. She wanders up and down the "Ho Stroll" in Anchorage, and gets a job dancing in a strip club. She does coke and crystal meth. She has nowhere to live, and stands on the sidewalk in the driving snow. (There is a breathtaking scene that has nothing to do with anything else, where Cindy, alone on a deserted side street, comes across a gigantic moose, which has wandered into the city. Moose and Cindy stand for a while, staring at each other. The snow falls. It is a moment that is beyond meaning, beyond plot, reminiscent of the encounter with the deer on the railroad tracks at dawn in "Stand By Me.")
John Cusack dials the burner down low, a smart choice, giving the character the guy-next-door persona which was so much a part of Hansen's successful M.O. When we see him in the flashbacks, with one of the girls he abducted (Gia Mantegna, in a gut-wrenching performance), he is calm, almost taciturn, even when he punches her in the head. He's almost kind and supportive with his victims, telling them they are "good girls." Cusack has placed his voice at a very interesting part of his register, making him sound (and seem) benign. It's a voice that almost isn't there. He is a hunter, a predator. He has worked hard at his camouflage.
Mixed in with the super fast hand-held action of the majority of the film are periodic aerial shots (Patrick Murguia is the cinematographer) of the forbidding Alaskan wilderness, mountains, glaciers, frozen rivers. These shots are constant reminders of what a vast field Hansen had to play in, and the impossibility of ever finding the missing.
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