Taking Lives - Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition)
by D.J. Caruso
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DVD details
Actor: Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Gena Rowlands, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier MartinezDirector: D.J. Caruso
Brand: Warner Brothers
Producer: Alan C. Blomquist
Producer: Anna DeRoy
Producer: Bernie Goldmann
Producer: Bruce Berman
Producer: Dana Goldberg
Writer: Jon Bokenkamp
Writer: Michael Pye
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD-Video, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 103 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-08-17
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Warner Home Video
DVD Reviews of Taking Lives - Director's Cut (Widescreen Edition)
DVD Review: Entertaining, But Too Easy To Solve
Summary: 3 Stars
This was a so-so serial killer movie with good and bad marks.
The good marks were mainly for keeping the viewer's interest. You don't fall asleep watching this film! Angeline Jolie looks as good as I've ever seen her, facially and figure-wise.
The film loses marks for an easy-to-solve story, some credibility gaps especially later in the movie and too small a part for Keifer Sutherland to get third billing. Also, the French accents by Jean-Hgues Anglade and Tcheky Karyo were hard for me to understand, forcing me to put on the English subtitles.
Overall, thuogh, it's worth a rental and was better than I had heard it was.
DVD Review: ok but not great
Summary: 3 Stars
This is a so so movie some good things and many other bad things. Angelina Jolie played here role well but the rest of the cast is below average. a solid sex scene but in general it's just poorly produced. DVD Review: So-so serial killer thriller
Summary: 3 Stars
"Taking Lives" had a lot of potential. You've got an interesting story. FBI Profiler, Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie) is a stranger in a strange land, Montreal Canada. She's been sent there to help track down a serial killer who assumes the lives of the people he's killed and thus becomes pretty untraceable. In the process, she falls for the only witness Art Dealer Costa (Ethan Hawke) who was the only witness to the first crime.
The film offers some serious action and interesting twists, but nothing you wouldn't see on television save for a pretty steamy scene between Scott and Costa which earns the film its R-rating.
The problem is, the film's slow and not quite believable on several levels. It is great if you are a serious fan of either Hawke or Jolie.
Rebecca Kyle, October 2008
DVD Review: Taking Time
Summary: 2 Stars
I have no idea why this movie was on my Netflix list, but after watching all those Ashley Judd movies I figure Angelina Jolie deserves at least as much of a chance.
Taking Lives is the usual FBI agent stalks the serial killer plot. Pretty/creepy FBI agent, Illeana (Angelina Jolie) is a drop-dead hottie who wears a wedding ring to avoid men asking her out, turns down everyone who asks her out, and likes to sleep in graves to literally walk in the footsteps of her victims. You see, Illeana is the best agent for this sort of case, and presumably anyone interested in catching a serial killer has to be a little strange herself. This supposed brilliance almost never actually appears in the film, unless you count breathless close-ups of Illeana staring at pictures or laying in graves.
Illeana is pursuing a serial killer. This serial killer takes peoples' lives and lives in them, "like a hermit crab." He looks for single men with few attachments who won't be missed for months at a time. Why? Because his mother, Mrs. Asher (Gena Rowlands), believed her son killed his twin brother in a boating accident and kept him locked up in the basement for years at a time. So our bad guy wants to live other peoples' lives because...he has really, really low self-esteem. Sure, okay.
For reasons that seem only to further muddle the plot, all this takes place in Canada. There are several actors in Taking Lives who are most assuredly esteemed thespians in their home country but come off stilted, hostile, and apathetic when speaking English. These angry Canadians are unhappy about an American taking over their case and they're not afraid to speak French around Illeana to let her know it. They showed her!
There are a multitude of problems with this film. It has a really cool ending which doesn't make up for the plodding pace, the ridiculous plot twists, or the leaden acting. Phillip Glass is not the composer for a neo-noir film that needs a dramatic, slow build - his music is too sweeping, too lighthearted, too commercial. There's also a crazy violent sex scene that shows quite a bit of Jolie and seems to exist primarily to boost interest in the film at its nadir.
Taking Lives performs more acrobatics than Illeana in the bedroom to convince us of its plot twists. At one point, a supposedly dead character is propped up by the real bad guy to look like he's committing a crime. Only the shot is CLEARLY of a living person holding a gun to the faux victim's head, and a flashback shows quite a different scene. In other words, Taking Lives simply cheats to pull off its plot twist that we all saw coming a mile away because there's no way the film is going to end in just an hour.
With a subdued Jolie, a bizarre appearance by Kiefer Sutherland, lack of chemistry between the two leads, and a supporting cast that doesn't speak English as their first language, Taking Lives would make for a boring movie even if it were an action film. As a slow-building drama it can barely stir to life.
DVD Review: Searching for a Serial Killer
Summary: 3 Stars
A man is struck on a highway. Another man takes his wallet and hits his face with a rock. We see newspaper reports of other dead men. Is there a connection between them? (Is the height of 5'10" average?) Then a woman goes to the police, she has seen her dangerous son. The Montreal police have sent for an expert; she gives her opinions about the killer (profiling). Then there is a fresh killing with a witness. The police question the witness about the murder. [Is there corroboration?] A tip brings them to a suspect's empty apartment. But is it empty? More leads turn up and have to be investigated. One involves exhuming a body, the bones testify to an identity. Special Agent Scott discovers a clue about the killer, and theorizes what caused the murders.
Will the trap set by the police catch the killer? If it fails will they try again? There is a very dramatic scene and a chase that seems too clever. The plan to send the witness away goes awry. The scenes seem incredible, as if the story was changed for dramatic action. [But the time element says there is more to this story.] We soon learn about the shocking surprise to this story. The chase is on again. Can they find a needle in the haystack? Agent Scott leaves for a new life. [Believable?] There is another shocking surprise at the end of this story. [Credible to you?]
A better plot, less overly complicated and more believable, would make a better film. There was no reference or use of scientific evidence gathering in this story about an unseen killer.
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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