For those of you have seen films like In the Cut or Twisted you probably know that both films were half-baked attempts at some sort of pseudo-psychology suspense thrillers dealing with serial killers. They offered little in the way of thrills or suspense, and spent a lot of time on what is suppose to have been the psychological aspect. What that means is that you had to insert tooth picks to keep your eyelids from drooping halfway through the tedious storyline. Taking Lives takes another stab at the genre, and its story is about as screwy as those two films, but I liked it anyway. Much of the reason could be because the over psycho-analyzing is kept to a minimum and the heroine, Ileana (Angeline Jolie), doesn't have the mental hang-ups that burdened Meg Ryan and Ashley Judd in the aforementioned films. That enables Director D. J. Caruso and writer Jon Bokenkamp to keep things moving at a rapid clip so that we do get a few real thrills and some genuine moments of suspense along the way and so that you won't stop to think too often about the Looney-tunes type. And for this kind of film, that's about all one can ask for.
Ileana is an FBI profiler called in by the French Canadian police to help them solve a murder case where a victim's face is disfigured by being smashed to bits until it's unrecognizable. Why are the Canadian police asking an FBI agent for help you may ask? Shame on you, you're not supposed to ask questions like that in a film like this so just accept it and move on. It doesn't take Ileana long to figure out that they are dealing with a serial killer, something you'll already know unless you were late getting into your theater seat from spreading too much butter around on your popcorn. So we know, and Ileana knows, which puts all of us one up on the Canadian police department that isn't exactly willing to accept that fact until another body pops up with a face that's another candidate for reconstructive surgery. This time however, there's a witness to the crime, an art dealer named Costa (Ethan Hawke) who was giving mouth to mouth to the victim when the police showed up. Of course that also makes Costa suspect number one, I suppose because the police think it's a little odd for someone to be giving mouth to mouth to a victim that doesn't have a mouth left to give mouth to mouth to.
As it turns out, it doesn't take Ileana long to clear Costa and to decide that Costa is in fact not the killer, but is being stalked by the killer. That's why she was called in because she is an ace at that sort of thing. There are a few plot twists, here and there, none plausible but entertaining just the same. Gena Rowlands is thrown in to the mix as the wicked Mother who tormented one of her twin sons who were supposed to be dead but may or may not be the killer. And everything careens down the suspense thriller runaway till we get to the final plot twist at the end. And that's about all you need to know in regards to the plot, less you start asking questions like the one in paragraph two.
A lot of what makes this work of course can be attributed to Jolie, Director Caruso, and to some degree writer Bokenkamp. It would have been easy for them to give us one of those tormented souls with a satchel full of cuckoo personality traits but she stays pretty much in character as to what an FBI should or should not be doing, well at least most of the time. Obviously she is attracted to Costa, but that attraction never weighs down her investigation or the script and that's a big plus. Rowlands is sufficiently haughty as Mrs. Asher, and she chews up the scenery fairly well in her brief scenes. Olivier' Martinez, John-Hugues Anglade, and Tcheky Karyo play the French Police. Martinez and Karyo don't think too highly of Ileana, but are kept in place by their boss Duval (Anglade). And thankfully none of them are written as just being dumb cops who are there just so we can see how much better Ileana is. Oh yeah, Keifer Sutherland is lurking about too, but you'll have to see the film to find out why.
The plot holes and plot contrivances are many, as that seems to go with the territory these days. The fact is though that Taking Lives offers enough of everything else that if you're willing to give it a pass on those things, you may just be able to enjoy it enough to let it get by. I had enough fun with it to do just that, and when any film gets me to suspend my disbelief long enough to have a little fun, I have no choice but to give it my grade which for Taking Lives is a B-.
Ileana is an FBI profiler called in by the French Canadian police to help them solve a murder case where a victim's face is disfigured by being smashed to bits until it's unrecognizable. Why are the Canadian police asking an FBI agent for help you may ask? Shame on you, you're not supposed to ask questions like that in a film like this so just accept it and move on. It doesn't take Ileana long to figure out that they are dealing with a serial killer, something you'll already know unless you were late getting into your theater seat from spreading too much butter around on your popcorn. So we know, and Ileana knows, which puts all of us one up on the Canadian police department that isn't exactly willing to accept that fact until another body pops up with a face that's another candidate for reconstructive surgery. This time however, there's a witness to the crime, an art dealer named Costa (Ethan Hawke) who was giving mouth to mouth to the victim when the police showed up. Of course that also makes Costa suspect number one, I suppose because the police think it's a little odd for someone to be giving mouth to mouth to a victim that doesn't have a mouth left to give mouth to mouth to.
As it turns out, it doesn't take Ileana long to clear Costa and to decide that Costa is in fact not the killer, but is being stalked by the killer. That's why she was called in because she is an ace at that sort of thing. There are a few plot twists, here and there, none plausible but entertaining just the same. Gena Rowlands is thrown in to the mix as the wicked Mother who tormented one of her twin sons who were supposed to be dead but may or may not be the killer. And everything careens down the suspense thriller runaway till we get to the final plot twist at the end. And that's about all you need to know in regards to the plot, less you start asking questions like the one in paragraph two.
A lot of what makes this work of course can be attributed to Jolie, Director Caruso, and to some degree writer Bokenkamp. It would have been easy for them to give us one of those tormented souls with a satchel full of cuckoo personality traits but she stays pretty much in character as to what an FBI should or should not be doing, well at least most of the time. Obviously she is attracted to Costa, but that attraction never weighs down her investigation or the script and that's a big plus. Rowlands is sufficiently haughty as Mrs. Asher, and she chews up the scenery fairly well in her brief scenes. Olivier' Martinez, John-Hugues Anglade, and Tcheky Karyo play the French Police. Martinez and Karyo don't think too highly of Ileana, but are kept in place by their boss Duval (Anglade). And thankfully none of them are written as just being dumb cops who are there just so we can see how much better Ileana is. Oh yeah, Keifer Sutherland is lurking about too, but you'll have to see the film to find out why.
The plot holes and plot contrivances are many, as that seems to go with the territory these days. The fact is though that Taking Lives offers enough of everything else that if you're willing to give it a pass on those things, you may just be able to enjoy it enough to let it get by. I had enough fun with it to do just that, and when any film gets me to suspend my disbelief long enough to have a little fun, I have no choice but to give it my grade which for Taking Lives is a B-.