A good thriller (despite structural flaws)

The new thriller Taking Lives opens promisingly with a flashback: you know, the kind of hazy, overexposed ‘80s flashback that reveals the "inciting incident" responsible for making a serial killer what he is today.

There’s this dweebish guy, Martin, who hooks up with a tough-talking drifter. They rent a car, there’s a blowout, and then… one of them dies horribly while changing the tire. It’s a shocking moment, and it sets in motion the look-out-behind-you level of this Angelina Jolie vehicle.

Cut to credits, which look like they were sliced together with a dull razorblade (à la Seven) and you know Taking Lives is striving to be a hip, edgy killer thriller.

Except it takes place in picturesque Quebec, Montreal, where nothing bad ever really happens along its quaint cobblestones. Jump forward to present day: there’s a killer on the loose, and the local cops (including hard-nosed Det. Paquette, played by Olivier Martinez) are forced to call in FBI Profiler Ileana Scott (Jolie) to help. We really shouldn’t generalize, but Jolie looks way too gorgeous to be an FBI field agent, though the director, D.J. Caruso, previously worked on TV shows like Dark Angel, so he must have watched a lot of X-Files episodes.

Scott and Paquette immediately don’t hit it off, there’s a lot of American-Canadian tension between them, but they pick up a witness at the next murder scene, local artist James Costa (Ethan Hawke), who draws a detailed sketch of the fleeing killer.

Here is where plausibility goes out the window in Taking Lives. Scott is later approached by Costa in a bar, they flirt, and she even slips him her cellphone number. Later, the police use Costa as "bait" to try and trap the killer. Along the way, Keifer Sutherland (24’s Jack Bauer) puts in about one day’s work as a menacing associate of Costa’s. Meanwhile, the mother (Gena Rowlands) of the dweebish Martin — who has obviously undergone a makeover from his earlier John Lennon look – approaches the police with information about how she had twins, and one of them died…

All these details are laid out like Easter egg clues along a bunny path, but the plot of Taking Lives only makes sense in retrospect, which is the frustrating way many thrillers operate these days. You watch the screen, mouth agape, asking yourself if people really act that way. You end up wondering why Jolie’s character is so mute and vulnerable throughout half the movie. She gets slapped around by a couple guys in the film, but since we’re not given any of her back-story, it’s hard to figure out why she puts up with it, or how such a tender damsel became an FBI agent in the first place. Suffice to say, she lacks Lara Croft’s derring-do throughout most of the movie. But she does look amazing.
On the other hand, Jolie looks like she could easily pummel Ethan Hawke to death in any encounter, sexual or violent, so their torrid tango seems a trifle miscast. Though Hawke does a good enough job playing against type (he must want follow in Training Day co-star Denzel Washington’s footsteps), he’s not quite physically right for the role. Many women in the audience may also wonder why Jolie would have a tumble with Hawke when Unfaithful’s Martinez was also available.

And, while we’re on the subject, what’s with Angelina and all the sex scenes? Sure, we have no objections, but they always feature her with eyes closed, head tilted back, chin raised, and lips stretched out to astonishing proportions. Then again, who’s watching her lips when the top comes off, right? Jolie seems to have settled for B-movie scripts since winning an Oscar for Girl, Interrupted. She’s becoming a second-string Ashley Judd, playing an increasing number of investigators and agents. With recent duds like Life Or Something Like It, Beyond Borders, and potboilers like the Lara Croft flicks, this once-focused actress seems to be losing her acting chops. She wanders around Taking Lives in a daze, giving no psychological clues as to why her character would be so naïve and… clueless. Maybe being an adoptive mother is more important to Jolie than acting these days.

Despite these structural flaws, Taking Lives at least looks like a good thriller, with its creepy killer hovels and nighttime shots of Quebec. Based on a novel by Jonathan Pye, it hints at some of the psychological depth without letting explanation stand in the way of the action. The killer is that odd modern concoction: a chameleon-like wannabe who kills in order to take over someone else’s (marginally cooler) life. There’s a little bit of Tom Ripley in the character as well (including an encounter on a moving train), but such a comparison only draws this movie up short. Giving away any more would ruin the implicit fun of watching Taking Lives, which you’re probably going to RENT anyway, so I’ll just leave it at that.