Taking Lives (2004)

Oct 10th, 2008 by cm1

Fast Download: Taking Lives (2004)

A successful FBI profiler, Illeana Scott (Jolie), is summoned to help out Canadian law enforcement in Montreal, to hunt down a serial killer who assumes the lives and identities (hence the title) of the people he kills as he travels across North America, which forces Illeana to adjust to working in a strange city with a police team with which she doesn’t really fit in.
“Taking Lives” sticks pretty much within the confines of its overworked genre. We have the disgruntled local cop who resents interference from a hotshot outsider; the prime suspect who turns out to be just another of the killer’s many victims; and the double twist resolution which really isn’t all that hard to see coming twenty minutes or so into the movie. Jolie gives her usual wooden performance as the FBI agent, barely managing to register a single convincing emotion throughout the course of the film. Hawke does his best with the material, though there really isn’t much he can do with it apart from going through the motions, which he does reasonably well. Gena Rowlands and Keefer Sutherland are also on hand to lend their talents, but since their roles are fairly miniscule, they don’t have much of a chance to display their wares as actors.