racy Wellman (Vaugier) has a knack for solving high-profile criminal cases for the FBI. That's because she has a special gift: Tracy's a psychic. Give her evidence, and she'll tune in to visions that reveal clues to the crime. She's also a rogue. Instead of following procedure, she slips onto potential crime scenes and single-handedly brings suspect to their knees. Tracy doesn't only read minds—to a certain degree, she can control other people by infiltrating their thoughts.
Everyone from Tracy's father (Williams) to FBI agent Dan Oliver (Sabata) cautions her about the danger of taking too many risks without backup. Dan even tries to give her a gun for her birthday, but Tracy rejects the present, saying, "Violence is not a solution."
Enter Sen. "Wild Bill" Armitage (Ironside). His 17-year-old daughter has gone missing just as he's entering the presidential race. The senator can't afford a scandal, so he hires Tracy to track down his only child. After scoping out the missing girl's bedroom, Tracy's hot on her trail. Her psychic senses lead her to evidence that the senator's daughter has joined a cult run by David Mendez (Roberts). True to her nature, Tracy plunges headfirst into joining the cult.
But there's a secret to which both Tracy's father and the senator are privy. Tracy is a prodigy of Project Mindstorm, a secret experimental program run by the U.S. government in the 1980s. She was a 9-year-old girl when Soviets raided the Mindstorm facility and destroyed it. The trauma left Tracy with hysterical amnesia, so she can't remember her past. A Mindstorm security guard adopted Tracy and raised her—and he's never told her about the past that she can't remember.
As Tracy now infiltrates the cult in search of the senator's daughter, her mysterious past will come to light and finally make sense.
Bright ideas survive the storm
SCI FI makes a lot of gutsy moves in its programming. Taking risks is bound to result in hits and misses. In many ways, Mindstorm is a big miss.
The film has the look and feel of a good idea that wasn't fully developed. It's difficult to like the characters, and their actions often make no sense. When Tracy investigates a parking lot filled with hundreds of buses, she realizes the caretaker is a serial killer as soon as she shakes his hand. Minutes later, Tracy calls Dan at his FBI office to report what she's found. Dan tells her that he's going to have to get a search warrant before the FBI can arrive at the scene. He says, "Don't do anything stupid." Unfortunately, it's good advice that no one seems to follow. The FBI knowingly leaves an unarmed woman alone for several hours with a serial killer, the serial killer conveniently ignores Tracy's presence during that time (despite the fact that he's ordered her to leave), and she's content to wander aimlessly among the buses for hours until the killer threatens her life just at the moment that the FBI finally does show up.
The filmmakers invest a lot of time on images of explosions and destruction, while the plot is so rushed that it comes across as convoluted and hard to follow. Viewers need to pay close attention to follow what's going on at any given moment.
And yet, the ideas at the heart of the story are interesting and timely. What happens when people with good intentions rely on control and manipulation to do what they think is right? Is there ever a time when violence is the answer to a problem that might become exceedingly worse if it isn't addressed immediately? It's too bad that more thought and time weren't devoted to an idea that had a lot of potential.
