Nice Twists, But Is It Enough?
Angelina Jolie stars as Agent Scott, the FBI expert tasked with helping some Canadian police officials discover the whereabouts and motives of a serial killer that has been active for nearly twenty years. What is known is that the serial killer learns about his victims before carefully killing them and assuming their identity. The trail had gone cold until the elderly mother of the killer reported to police that she had just saw her dead son. She had actually had twins years ago, but one boy had drowned around the age of fourteen while the other was thought to have been dead already. That of course turns out to not be the case.
The serial killer was, we’re lead to believe, caught in the act of murder one night by Ethan Hawke’s character, Costa. Costa comes in to the police station for questioning and his involvement in the capture of the killer and in that of Scott’s personal life grows as the case drags on. Several intriguing plot twists throughout the film keep it interesting, and having not seen many serial killer films I can say I was caught off guard by a few of the twists which gave the experience more of an impact. Despite that, it’s not a movie I see myself watching again very often, if at all, because while it was certainly worth a once over, it just doesn’t have the appeal to make it very interesting a second time.
To Blu-ray
This Unrated and Extended version of the film includes a lot of nudity from Angelina which was surprising, as well as plenty of violent scenes, although these were probably tame enough to be in the R version. In terms of picture quality, Taking Lives was not very impressive. Several scenes, especially during the ‘love’ scene late in the film, are riddled with a surprising amount of grain. For the most part the movie looks fine, but the amount of technical shortcomings was in fact a little surprising. For audio, WHV included a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 track that does a great job of setting the sometimes eerie atmosphere. In all other cases the dialogue comes through very well and I have no complaints.
Getting to the extra features now, there aren’t a lot to be found here. Included are:
-Feature – A four part feature in SD that is about twenty minutes long acts as the general purpose making of and behind the scenes piece. The four parts are named The Art of Collaboration, Profiling A Director, Bodies of Evidence, and Puzzle Within A Puzzle. Typical making-of footage and cast and crew interviews, including Director Caruso and actress Angelina Jolie, are included.
-Gag Reel – For a film that tried to take itself very serious from start to finish, I was a bit surprised to see an included three minute SD gag reel. It’s hardly funny, but for as short as it is and for curiosity’s sake, it’s worth a peek.
-Trailer – The trailer is also included, in SD.
Overall, this is another weak set of extras offered by WHV, but again given the film itself and the price point of the release, I’m not too surprised. Let’s get to the summary…