Taking Lives (2004) Movie Info
| Field | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Name | Taking Lives (2004) |
| Director | D. J. Caruso |
| Screenplay Writer | Jon Bokenkamp |
| Based on Novel by | Michael Pye (Taking Lives) |
| Lead Actors | Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland |
| Cast | Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Gena Rowlands, Olivier Martinez, Tchéky Karyo, Justin Chatwin |
| Genre | Crime, Thriller |
| Release Date | March 19, 2004 (United States) |
| Duration | 1h 43m (103 minutes) |
| Budget | ~$45 million |
| Language | English |
| Country | United States, Canada |
| Box Office (Worldwide) | ~$65.7 million |
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Summary
An FBI profiler (Jolie) joins the hunt for a serial killer that takes on the identity of each of his victims.
Review
Spoiler alert this movie sucks In a completely non sensical, forced attempt at suspense, Taking Lives just takes up about two hours of your life that you’ll never get back. Jolie stars as an FBI profiler trying to catch a serial killer who assumes the identify of all he murders. Hawke is the prime suspect and there is an immediate attraction between these two because, well, the script calls for it. Considering the supposed expert that she is deemed to be, one would think that Jolie’s character would not exactly come on too strongly to the main suspect.
Of course, the movie does all it can to cast suspicions over who the culprit truly is. This includes a five minute appearance by Kiefer Sutherland that is thrown in as a desperate plot device to confuse the audience. Even a gratuitous, passionate sex scene involving Jolie does not save the film it just makes you wonder whether the writers lost a bet of some sort. Few movies in the history of cinema then set up a more elaborate, absurd ending. Because you’ll be gauging your eyes out with Sour Patch Kids before you ever arrive at this part (if you somehow are forced to watch this crap at gunpoint), I feel ok about ruining it for you:
After letting Hawke’s character go and then gasp! realizing that he was, indeed, the murderer, Jolie and the FBI set up a sting operation. Naturally, this entails our heroine pretending as though she is pregnant with the killer’s baby setting up a house and life in the middle of nowhere for seven months in order to lure him to her home alone, so he can finally find her and stab her in the pregnant stomach (an absolutely grotesque act, even when you discover that it was a prop of a pregnant belly) and then she can successful kill him in a one on one encounter, closing the case for good. Why? Again, because the script called for it.
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