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Topic: Review: Jolie's 'Taking Lives' works (Read 272 times)

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Review: Jolie's 'Taking Lives' works
« on: Mar 26^th, 2004, 3:36am »

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Review: Jolie's 'Taking Lives' works
Good acting, good twists make for good film
By David Germain
Associated Press
Friday, March 19, 2004 Posted: 10:33 AM EST (1533 GMT)

(AP) -- Angelina Jolie finally has a decent movie on her hands, and the dark, suspenseful thriller "Taking Lives" comes none too soon.

Since winning the supporting-actress Academy Award for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted," Jolie has starred in a string of bad movies -- although she has managed to maintain a strong screen presence in the service of rotten films such as "Original Sin," "Beyond Borders," "Life Or Something Like It" and her two "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" outings.

With "Taking Lives," Jolie gives her finest performance since her Oscar win and is surrounded by a robust supporting cast in a fairly fresh serial-killer tale.

Co-star Ethan Hawke, an Oscar nominee for "Training Day," continues to emerge as a serious actor with far greater range than earlier boyish roles hinted at.

"Taking Lives" is based on the novel by Michael Pye, though oddly, Jolie's lead character was created specifically for the film and grafted onto the author's tale of a mass-murderer who steals his victims' identities.

Director D.J. Caruso, screenwriter Jon Bokenkamp and their collaborators developed the character of FBI profiler Illeana Scott, who's on loan to Montreal police investigating the slayings of two men.

Her intuitive approach, which includes laying in a suspect's boyhood cot or a victim's makeshift grave to grasp their perspective, uncovers a 20-year chain of unsolved killings that indicate the perpetrator has been targeting loners and assuming their identities because of inadequacies in his own life.

"He's like a hermit crab," Scott says. "He outgrows one shell and starts looking for another."

Her own hard emotional shell softens when she encounters art dealer James Costa (Hawke), a witness to one of the killings who later becomes a suspect and potential victim, along with a romantic interest for the dispassionate Scott.

Jolie's sultry stoniness and Hawke's puppy-dog earnestness mingle well, and the film's twists and surprises -- some fairly obvious, with a few nicely concealed -- give the leads a chance to play out deep, dark passions with convincing sentiment.

Gena Rowlands highlights the supporting cast, making a small role as a suspect's mother her own with a queen-bee arrogance that offers hints of what Norman Bates' mom might have been like before he killed her and started wearing her clothes.

"Taking Lives" unfortunately makes scant use of Kiefer Sutherland as the prime suspect, who appears in only a few fleeting scenes. Tcheky Karyo, Olivier Martinez and Jean-Hughes Anglade provide depth and personality to the local cops -- some gratified, others resentful over Scott's presence.

Director Caruso, who created fine film-noir ambiance in the otherwise dreary 2002 thriller "The Salton Sea," this time maintains a good mix of atmosphere and engaging action.

Philip Glass' score has a strong whiff of Hitchcock, tensely repetitive orchestrations that pay affectionate respect to the music of Bernard Hermann.

"Taking Lives" even musters a couple of twitch-in-your-seat scares, no small accomplishment for contemporary audiences that have pretty much seen it all.

"Taking Lives," a Warner Bros. release, is rated R for strong violence including disturbing images, language and some sexuality.

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