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TAKING LIVES
by Peter Sobczynski

March 19, 2004

(out of 4 stars)

FILM CREDITS: Written by Jon Bokenkamp. Directed by D.J. Caruso. Starring Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez and Gena Rowlands.

The best thing that you can say about "Taking Lives", the latest in what seems to be an endless series of serial killer thrillers attempting to ride the coattails of David Fincher’s modern masterpiece "Seven", is that it isn’t quite as awful as last month’s entry in the genre, the abysmal Ashley Judd film "Twisted". Both films are dull as dishwater, indifferently acted and feature screenplays so trite that even the dullest audience members can pretty much figure out the identity of the killer by the time the opening corporate logos flash on the screen. The basic difference is that Angelina Jolie is still willing to do nudity in her films while Judd has apparently vowed to stay resolutely covered up (even when starring in what is billed as an "erotic thriller"); this is not an observation I am especially proud to make (let’s see them plagiarize that at Brandeis anytime soon), but I must admit that it is the truth. Okay, there is one other difference; like most movies today, "Taking Lives" was shot in Canada (in Montreal) in order to save money but at least this one has the good taste to actually take place there instead of posing as someplace else.

The film opens with one of those pre-credit sequences that seem designed to be easily detached from the main body of the film so that it can appear on the Internet in order to promote it (as this scene has). In it, a twerpy guy, leaving home in 1983, crosses paths with another young man and they decide to drive off together to Seattle, where the other guy hopes to kick-start his musical career. They blow a tire and while the Kurt Cobain-wannabe is changing the tire, the twerp pushes him into the path of an oncoming car for no apparent reason and kills him. Of course, this doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense if you think about it-what is he going to do about the driver. Luckily, the obliging driver apparently swerves into a convenient stunt ramp because the car immediately flips over a few dozen times and explodes.

As the "Seven"-esque credits reveal, the twerp continues to kill people for the next twenty years, always mutilating the bodies so that they cannot be identified. Apparently, the flummoxed Montreal police don’t see anything strange about all of these murders and it takes quirky FBI profiler Illeana Scott (Jolie) to suspect that the crimes might be linked. (We can tell that she is quirky because she looks at gory crime-scene photos while eating and likes to lie in the holes where the victims were buried in order to...well, in order to provide an arresting first shot of Angelina Jolie.) Her brilliant deduction? She figures that the killer was a lonely child who always wanted to be someone else-her belief is that the killer deliberately chooses specific people, kills them and then assumes their lives while planning the next murder. Of course, the logical flaw in this is that for it to work, the victim would have to be a friendless and isolated loner whom no one would miss for any period of time. (So much for getting to be like other people).

While continuing his murderous siege on basement-dwelling comic-book fans, movie critics and the members of Mr. Mister, the killer is witnessed in mid-act by struggling artist James Costa (Hawke), who chases him off and attempts to save the victim. He provides Illeana with a sketch of the killer and becomes enraged when the local cops think that his story might be too good to be true. Illeana, being the brilliant profiler that she is, intuits that he is telling the truth and is likely to become the next victim because he can identify the killer. She works to protect James while solving the case, gradually developing feelings for her charge that are the kind that are not exactly becoming of a brilliant FBI profiler (especially when the charge is embodied by Ethan Hawke, who looks as if he may begin slacking at any moment).

The story is, as you can tell, preposterous from the get-go (although based on a novel by Michael Pye, it apparently doesn’t have much connection with it-for starters, the Angelina Jolie character doesn’t exist in it) and so director D.J. Caruso tries to sway us from that obvious fact by throwing in such distractions as brief appearances from big stars (such as Keifer Sutherland and Gena Rowlands), scenes cribbed from other films (besides the obvious "Seven" lifts, he also borrows a lot from the works of Brian De Palma-a chase through a festival crowd out of "Blow Out", a twin subplot from "Sisters" and the dramatic tension of "Wise Guys") and gory visuals meant to jolt viewers with their sheer unpleasantness. Although Caruso (who previously directed the dumb, though not entirely uninteresting, meth-head drama "The Salton Sea") hasn’t made a particularly good film, he has at least made a stylish one. Sure, the best visual moments in the film (such as the first shot of Jolie) add nothing to the film and merely call attention to themselves, but since there is nothing else of interest going on, they do serve their purpose.

The best thing about "Taking Lives", though, is Angelina Jolie. Although she has been in more than her share of awful movies over the last couple of years (has there been an actor in recent memory with a streak of movies as bad as "Gone in 60 Seconds", "Life or Something Like It", "Tomb Raider",. "Original Sin", "Tomb Raider 2" and "Beyond Borders"?) but she is still as compelling of an on-screen presence as there is working in Hollywood today. Although "Taking Lives" is not worthy of her talents (even though it is still a step up from the truly appalling "Beyond Borders"), it at least supplies her with a character that suits her unique talents. Like Jolie herself, Illeana is strange, sexy and compellingly aloof-a mystery wrapped in an enigma instead of underwear. In the aforementioned sex scene with Hawke, it is apparently so good for him that his medical stitches pop; with any other person, that might seem over the top but as played by Jolie, it seems like just another Friday night.

If you go to "Taking Lives" (which I must strenuously suggest against), I want you to pay particularly close attention to the absolutely ridiculous finale-one that might have been rejected for "Club Dread" for being too goofy. Without giving anything away, there is a particular item of clothing that proves to be of the utmost importance. I ask you-wouldn’t it almost have been worth the ticket price if Caruso had the wit to show us a closet full of that particular item, one for each month? If he had, "Taking Lives" might have become some kind of weirdo classic instead of the dull retread that it currently is; maybe it is just waiting to kill a more interesting movie and take over its plot.

-- PETER SOBCZYNSKI

Copyright © 2004 Peter Sobczynski
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While the views expressed by Peter Sobczynski do not necessarily reflect the views of Criticdoctor.com, the Critic Doctor will occasionally examine Mr. Sobczynski's film reviews to bring forth an honest examination of those views expressed.