It is a performances centric movie

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

Incredibly sloppy filmmaking with little to no original ideas. The amount of goofy screw ups is unreal and the film has aged very poorly. This is 100% Angelina Jolie worship with aspects of many other crime/murder/thriller movies thrown in as background noise. Watch Se7en or Zodiac instead.

Taking Lives (2004) *** (out of 4)FBI profiler Illeana (Angelina Jolie) is called to Canadia after a string of bodies are found. It turns out that a serial killer has been mutilating men for nearly two decades and a break happens when a young artist named Costa (Ethan Hawke) witnesses one of his acts. Soon Illeana begins to have feelings for Costa even though she's putting him and herself in danger when the killer comes after the witness.TAKING LIVES is a rather interesting film. I say that because it kept me entertained from start to finish but at the same time it was the most unthrilling thriller that I've ever seen. In fact, as I was watching the movie and being entertained by it, I couldn't help but question myself on why I was being entertained. After all, I guessed who the killer was very early on in the picture and usually this means that the rest of the picture is going to drag. It turns out I was right about the killer and I predicted every single twist that the picture threw at me but at the same time I had fun watching it.Why? Because the cast was so great that it was okay to simply turn your brain off or at least not laugh at the stupidity that was surrounding them. For starters, Jolie was simply excellent here and really delivered an extremely strong performance and one where she made you believe that she was this brilliant mind. I believed the toughness that she brought the character and I thought she worked extremely well with Hawke. As for Hawke, he really gets to play a wide range of emotions as this artist who finds his life in danger and he pulled it off. Gena Rowlands, Olivier Martinez, a young Paul Dano and Kiefer Sutherland are all good as well.As I said, I found the identity of the killer to be easy to figure out and in fact none of the twists were all that good. The film offers up some stylish direction and there's no doubt that on a technical level it's impressive. The film desperately wants to be on the level of THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and SEVEN but falls well short of that. TAKING LIVES was a very entertaining movie thanks to the cast but there's no question that had the actors not been so great that the movie itself would have been a complete bomb.

Taking Lives was screened on TV last night and, since it was late, I recorded it. I'm glad I did.Apart from starring Angelina Jolie, who I have the utmost admiration for, not just as an actress but as an all-round wonderful person, the action was "ordinary" with Keifer Sutherland taking a very minor part.It is difficult to review this movie without including spoilers and to do that would be somewhat pointless because there are so many twists and turns. Maybe the smarter viewers saw them coming but, personally, I had no idea with the result that I was on the edge of my nice comfortable La-z-boy for much of the movie.Whilst I was pretty confident that the guilty one would get his due deserts in the end, almost right up to the last minute, I was fooled (you'll see what I mean). And let me add that I was VERYT pleasantly fooled because, by that point, I was actually seething with anger.I suppose Taking Lives was, in the final analysis, just another whodunnit movie but I enjoyed it and, as I say, I'm glad I recorded it.

It WAS predictable. I pretty much "knew it" from the beginning. But it's kind of like watching one of those true-life murder docu shows. You know whom the killer is, but it's still interesting enough to see how it plays out. It starts out with a damn good prologue. It's 20 years earlier and the serial killer's first killing is shown as is his modus operandi.All the actors did a decent job with their performances. Jolie's character was cliché as the weird(eccentric) profiler, but she did the best she could with the role. There were a couple of really bad red herrings. I mean did the writers really think the viewers would fall for that? There were plot-holes and some unexplained things that I wanted to know. Such as Asher's(the serial killer) recent run-in with his mother, and the plans he made after that. Is that what egged him on the path he took? And Asher's mother(Gena Rowlands) telling the police how dangerous he was? She last saw him as a teenager. She tells Illeana(Jolie) he was violent, but in her first interview with the police she makes him sound really creepy scary dangerous. I wanted her to elaborate on what exactly happened.The ending goes way out there. Did laws and police conduct go out the window, and what happened was premeditated? I don't have a complete problem with this, but I think some flashbacks at the end or maybe during the closing credits(which would have been artsy too) to show how everything was planned out would have been enlightening. They did do a few brief flashbacks earlier in the story after Illeana(Jolie) realizes the truth, so it's not like it would have been out of place. There's just not enough here that satisfied me for the last seven months that went by in the story. The specific ending itself, you may find it either stupid or puzzling. Or both! I found it puzzling, which in turn made it a bit stupid. If only there were more explanation, then it might have been a really cool ending.All in all, I would say that it was mildly entertaining thriller, but don't expect any surprises. 6/10