Taking Lives

UK Release Date. 23 April 2004

Certification. 15

Running Time. 1 hour 43 mins

Director. D.J. Caruso

Cast. Jean-Hugues Anglade, Paul Dano, Ethan Hawke, Angelina Jolie, Tchéky Karyo, Olivier Martinez, Gena Rowlands, Kiefer Sutherland.

Rating. 36%

Review.

Although competently produced, Taking Lives makes no attempt to advance the serial killer genre. The film is very much a serial killer thriller by numbers.

Angelina Jolie stars as Illeana Scott, an obsessive FBI profiler, who doesn't always follow the rule book. Sound familiar?

Set in Montreal, director D.J. Caruso casts several prominent European actors as French-speaking Canadians - Tchéky Karyo, Jean-Hugues Anglade and Olivier Martinez. Whilst they lend a certain gravitas to proceedings, all are woefully underemployed.

An intriguing and unsettling opening prologue, featuring a young Paul Dano, promises much, but by the time the audience reaches the ridiculous finale, any interest in the fate of the main characters has long since waned. 

Taking Lives was loosely based on a novel by Michael Pye about a Dutch teenager who befriends, and then murders, rich people in order to assume their identity and live out their comfortable lives. I think I would rather have read the book.