The only genuinely gripping scenes in Angelina Jolie's latest thriller occur right in the beginning and right at the end.?? Any other attempt at suspense or excitement in this movie is an outright failure, unless it involves Jolie disrobing. Unfortunately, \Taking Lives"" quickly reveals itself to be an unimaginative, by-the-numbers serial killer flick that leaves no clich?? unused.
The pre-title opening scene sets a high standard to which the rest of the film never even comes close.??It is 1983 when we first meet the serial killer, a dorky looking drifter who befriends a fellow passenger on the bus. Before the 10-minute mark, he gives his buddy a swift kick into an oncoming truck and walks away with the dead guy's belongings.??The premise for the ""hermit crab"" killer (he steals the identities of his victims) has been set in motion with promising style, which wanes soon after the opening credits.
Flash forward to 20 years later, when bodies start piling up in Montreal and the killer's mother (Gena Rowlands) says she spotted her supposedly dead son on a ferry.??Apparently the Canadian police force, which includes a resentful Olivier Martinez (best known as the villain in ""SWAT"" who repeatedly screams, ""One hundred MEEL-ion dollars!""), are incapable of cracking the case on their own. Enter FBI Special Agent Illeana Scott (Jolie), a brilliant American with unconventional methods of solving crimes.
Once Scott arrives in Canada, the leads start popping up-Special Agent Scott encounters severed fingers, bodies that fall out of the ceiling and a wussy art dealer (a terrible Ethan Hawke) who she inexplicably sleeps with, among other things. Of course, this all leads to the big twist, which is as predictable as the one in last week's cookie-cutter mystery, ""Secret Window.""
In fact, the only shock in the twist ending of this film is is that it was intended to be a twist. Sure, most of the cast is given a rudimentary detail to make them look like a suspect, but even the most inexperienced moviegoer could sniff out the killer immediately.?? If Agent Scott were as brilliant as the movie suggests she is, this movie would have been only twenty minutes long.
The acting in ""Taking Lives"" is not completely awful, but the characters are straight from any standard-issue thriller. Director D.J. Caruso gives the movie a slick visual look, but doesn't infuse it with the energy and originality of his prior film, ""The Salton Sea.""?? This movie is a shallow cut-and-paste job, an attempt to copy elements from other superior films (""Silence of the Lambs,"" ""Seven"" and ""Sea of Love"" particularly) and awkwardly throw them all in the mix.
Save for the wonderfully tasteless closing scene, ""Taking Lives"" is a forgettable clich??-fest that fails to thrill or intrigue.??If you seek stylish entertainment, try hanging out with the denizens of ""The Salton Sea"" or viewing of one of the other better movies that ""Taking Lives"" imitates.
