Taking Lives - Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition)
by Tony Scott, D.j. Caruso
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DVD details
Author: Michael PyeActor: Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez, Tcheky Karyo
Director: D.j. Caruso, Tony Scott
Brand: Warner Brothers
Cinematographer: Amir Mokri
Editor: Anne V. Coates
Other Contributor: Philip Glass
Producer: Bruce Berman
Producer: Dana Goldberg
Producer: David Heyman
Producer: Mark Canton
Producer: Bernie Goldmann
Writer: Hillary Seitz
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Widescreen, 2.35:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-17
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 4318
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product features:
- A psychological thriller, Taking Lives is the story of an FBI agent who becomes involved with her key witness while tracking a prolific serial killer who assumes the lives and identities of the people he kills. She finds herself surrounded by numerous suspects and no one to trust.Running Time: 103 min. Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: NR Age: 012569431829
DVD Reviews of Taking Lives - Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Both ways of "Taking Lives" apply to this serial killer
Summary: 4 Stars
There are movies where what you really want to write is a critique and not a review, the key difference being that a review is written for those who have not seen a film and require you not to give the game away, whereas in a critique you know you are talking to those in the know. With movies like "The Crying Game," "The Sixth Sense," "Executive Decision," "Memento," "The Village," and the like you have to be circumspect with what you say. You can say that you liked (or hated) the way in which you were fooled (or not), but the fact that you acknowledge being fooled is part of the game can be giving away too much and saying that "Taking Lives" set you up before you ever see the movie might be about as cryptic as you can get away with in this regard.
At least with "Taking Lives" you know that we are dealing with a cat and mouse game between a serial killer and the FBI profiler, Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie) trying to bring him to justice. The title of the film has a double meaning because not only does this killer take the lives of his victim, as in making them dead rather that alive, but he also takes over their lives, assuming their identities until he becomes bored and moves on to his next victim. That means that each of his victims is older than the previous ones, whose only real common denominator is that if and when they are found their identities are destroyed (e.g., hands are missing so no fingerprints).
At this point I must digress. The criminal trial of O.J. Simpson not only signaled the end of the paradigm by which science provided all answers, it gave common folk an education on DNA evidence. I can remember watching "Basic Instinct" and knowing that even the forensic lab for the L.A.P.D. would be able to figure out from all the fluids found on the murder scene at the start of the film that Sharon Stone had been there. So while watching "Taking Lives" I knew I was going to have to play along and pretend for the sake of the narrative that it is "easy" to make it impossible to identify a body. But then look at all the times movies and television shows have people still trying to beat a trace when the telephone in your home can tell you the number that is calling you before you pick up the phone.
The point is that movies like "Taking Lives" have their own internal logic. They are going to try and fool us as well as the main characters and so we expect that, which becomes part of the equation for trying to fool us. Part of the problem is that just because you are spinning through all the possible twists and turns the film might take you simply have to get some of them right by sheer luck. Ultimately the big question becomes what makes watching the more movie enjoyable for you: going along for the ride or getting ahead of the game?
This is actually a film where the hero might be more interesting than the villain. To be a good profiler you have to be able to think in the same demented ways as the killers you are tracking, and Illeana Scott is pretty good at that. When we first meeting her she is lying in an open grave. You first thought is that she is just weird, but then she comes up with a couple of insightful deep thoughts that impress the Montreal cops she is helping with the case (we know that a lot of movies are filmed in Canada because it is cheaper so it is interesting to see one that admits to being there and picks Quebec so that the supporting characters can have French-Canadian accents).
This is also one of those thrillers where the cop becomes emotionally involved with a witness, although with the gender reversals the femme fatale here is an art dealer named Costa (Ethan Hawke). He might actually have seen the killer, interrupting him during his latest attempt at murder, which would be a pretty big break. But the police also have another one when a Mrs. Asher (Gena Rowlands) show sup and insists that she has seen her son, who was supposedly killed in a traffic accident long ago and far away. After years of getting only bits and pieces of evidence, things are coming to a head pretty fast for Illeana.
There is always an attempt to give the cop in such stories additional personal burdens that come into play as they try to solve the crime. "The Silence of the Lambs" is certainly a classic example of where that works, and "Taking Lives" has the same aspirations. There is a nude scene involving Illeana and my daughter daughter asked if this was an old movie from earlier in Jolie's career as an explanation for why she was doing it, but the reason is that it speaks to the character she is playing. The fact that she has strengths and flaws is reinforced by the two Canadian cops she is working with, one of who respects her work and the other who dismisses her as causing problems; to some degree, both are right. The point here is not simply that in the end Illeana wins the game, but how she does so, which is the real purpose of the film's end game, and that our heroine can give as good as she gets.
D.J. Caruso has directed a stylish thriller, with a script by Jon Bokenkamp based on the novel by Michael Pye. I was surprised that this movie was only 109 minutes long (the director's cut is about six minutes longer than the theatrical release), because there is a lot happening in this film. This was rather surprising because there are lots of shots of Jolie's eyes as he character is thinking deep thoughts and putting together the pieces. So "Taking Lives" gets bonus points for being fast paced and we are back to the question of whether or not you will appreciate its twists and turns. I have to think that few veiwers will not appreciate at least going along for the ride.
Description of Taking Lives - Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition)
A psychological thriller, Taking Lives is the story of an FBI agent who becomes involved with her key witness while tracking a prolific serial killer who assumes the lives and identities of the people he kills. She finds herself surrounded by numerous suspects and no one to trust.DVD Features:
Additional Scenes
Documentaries:Four probing documentaries with the Cast and Crew. * The Art of Collaboration: How the filmmaking team came together * Profiling a Director: Inside D.J. Caruso's Mind * Bodies of Evidence: Stars confess their secrets of working on an ultra-intense thriller * Puzzle Within The Puzzle: The teamwork of Caruso and veteran editor Anne V. Coates
Outtakes
Theatrical Trailer
While it doesn't rank with such grim classics as The Silence of the Lambs and Seven, D.J. Caruso's Taking Lives offers similarly heavy atmosphere, beginning well before fizzling into absurdity. Freely adapted from the novel by Michael Pye, and set in Montreal (although it was filmed in Quebec City), the plot trades in several familiar tropes of the serial-killer genre, beginning with the FBI agent (Angelina Jolie) who brings her unique skills (and brooding, low-key demeanor) to the vexing case of a killer who, out of apparent self-loathing, steals the identities of his victims and lives their lives until it's time for the next gruesome murder. Ethan Hawke plays the killer's alleged next victim, and in a film filled with twists that grow increasingly unconvincing, Keifer Sutherland is menacingly cast as a shifty suspect. Caruso's previous film was the creepy drug thriller The Salton Sea, so he's well-qualified to infuse Taking Lives with a darkly stylish sense of dread and at least one good shock to keep your adrenaline flowing. The second half essentially betrays the promise of the first, but there's enough going on to hold your interest to the end. --Jeff Shannon
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