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| Taking Lives |
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  (4/10)
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Runtime: 102 |
| Public Rating: 7.58 (172 votes) |
Director: D.J. Caruso |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Drama/suspense |
Year: 2004 |
| Writer(s): Michael Pye (novel); Jon Bokenkamp (screnplay) |
| Distributor: Warner Bros. |
| Reviewed by: Le Apprenti |
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A kid befriends another kid who looks like John Lennon (post-Beatles version). Both are stuck in the middle of a freeway due to a flat tire. While the kid fixes the flat, the John Lennon kid pushes him onto the middle of the road to be hit by an oncoming car. The car flips over and crashes, killing the driver. The still-breathing kid is stoned to death by the John Lennon kid, who then assumes his identity and moves on.
Sounds crazy, eh? Especially when a car can get flipped over from hitting a human body.
From a novel by Michael Pye comes Taking Lives, a crime drama about a serial killer who gets his kicks by killing and then assuming the identities of his victims. It is a cycle that repeats whenever he craves to live someone else's life, and has been doing so for nearly 20 years all around Canada. In charge of this case is a trio of French-Canadian detectives Leclair (Tchéky Karyo), Duval (Jean-Hugues Anglade), and Paquette who, being played by Olivier Martinez, sounds like he's still in S.W.A.T. mode. But they cannot do it alone. They need the help of an "all-powerful American FBI agent". Enter the beautiful Angelina Jolie as perceptively brilliant FBI profiler Illeana Scott. Being that this is an Angelina Jolie film, her character naturally takes charge of the investigation, and gets the snappiest lines.
While Leclair and Duval welcome her, Paquette treats her with hostility. At the start, I expected them to be having sex with each other halfway into the movie because that's how Hollywood movie romances develop: they have to hate each other first before starting to like each other. But that does not pan out. Playing Jolie's other half is Ethan Hawke as Costa, an artist and a bachelor who claims to have seen the face of the serial killer she is investigating. The two establish rapport very quickly, moving into second base in no time at all. Ethan's Costa is quite a chatter, while Jolie looks starrry-eyed and her rich, pouty lips are just begging to be smooched.
Although the serial killer is given a formal introduction in the prologue, he is hardly the feature player. More bodies are uncovered, a composite profile of the serial killer is mapped out, but no real insight into him is given. For the viewers' information, Illeana visits the killer's mother, played by Gena Rowlands, in order to establish some kind of family dysfunction that makes him tick, and makes enough sense to move on with the story.
As anticipated, Costa and Illeana do eventually make out. The sex scene is a testament to Jolie's most gifted body part - her lips. No matter how mechanical it looks, her oral gestures makes it captivating. Ms. Jolie is a talented actress, but her choice of films lately has been anything but that. Like her other erotic thriller Original Sin, Taking Lives loses steam after the sex scene is over.
*SPOILERS*
To make things interesting, a decoy suspect is thrown in. Keifer Sutherland, who is terrific as the telephone sniper in Phone Booth, is just as great in leading the characters - as well as the viewers - on that he's the killer. Director D.J. Caruso makes every effort to play up that effect: giving Sutherland low-key lighting, panning the camera on him at the right moments, and not mentioning his character's name until after he is dead.
Hawke is barely convincing as Costa but is creepy as the real killer. In a way, the killer's absence from the screen helps carry his performance in the few final minutes in the movie. It is not a stretch to believe that Costa has all that time to moonlight as an artist and stalk unsuspecting male loners to kill and steal their lives. Nor is it a stretch to believe that he can keep up his facade as an artist and showcase his paintings at an exhibition. What makes him unbelievable is his serial killer profile. Look at Silence of the Lambs, Se7en and Red Dragon. These are excellent films on serial crimes not because of what the investigators/profilers can deduce, but because of the way the serial killers are written. They allow the viewers to look into their minds, their habitats, their habits, their social standings, their distorted images of themselves, and how all these things collectively drive them to kill. None of these are present in Costa, save for Hawke's acting.
It takes 7 months and Illeana to move into an isolated rural house in a snow-capped area before the climactic confrontation between her and the killer takes place. That may be in the original novel, but I'll give Mr. Pye the benefit of the doubt that the setup is better developed than what the movie is showing. You know Illeana has to win being that this is an Angelina Jolie movie, so she musters the necessary superhuman prowess to overpower the killer despite her skinny frame. The confrontation is hardly exciting but scary enough in a domestic violence sort of way. When Illeana takes hits on her supposedly pregnant belly - courtesy of her romp with Costa - it is quite shocking. However, any idiot can tell that it is a fake belly at first glance. It is too protrusive and abnormally disproportional to her frame. But it is a necessary design to fool Costa - for 7 months. Now why would an intelligent serial killer like Costa wait that long to spring on her? Instead of trying to fool him, Illeana could have just go to where he's hiding and kill him.
*END OF SPOILERS*
For all it's worth, Taking Lives is just another bottom-of-the-barrel crime drama. It is dreary and forgettable. The only redeeming quality is Jolie's 'oratorical' sex scene, but that can be viewed on video or DVD.
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