A brilliant film that helped define a genre

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The movie turns out to be a little better than the average. Starting from a romantic formula often seen in the cinema, it ends in the most predictable (and somewhat bland) way.

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 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.

This starts in 1983 St Jovite, young Martin Asher (Paul Dano) viciously kills a man. After the opening credit, the movie goes to today in Montreal. The police have Costa (Ethan Hawke) in custody who says he's witnessed a murder that bares a striking resemblance to the one earlier. Olivier Martinez is one of the cops who suspects Costa is hiding something. FBI special agent Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie) is brought in to profile. They eventually settle on another suspect played by Kiefer Sutherland.The opening made a mistake. It's not clear enough that the first murder happened in the past. Flashing the dates for 2 seconds is not enough. I missed it, and I couldn't figure out the start at the first viewing. Paul Dano bears no resemblance to Ethan Hawke. So it was hard to figure out why the audience is given clues that Ethan Hawke is the killer.And there are a lot of little mistakes. Angelina Jolie is trying too hard to be that quirky FBI profiler type with the far away stare. There are too many clues, and too many obvious clues. There is good mood being put down, but there are too many little problems to overlook.

This could have been so much better. Actually it is not at all difficult to guess who is the bad guy since there are not many people introduced. If you didn't know it in the first hour, you do no actually care for the genre at all.With all the lame action going on (surprise factor in the elevator was ZERO, it was SOOOO obvious) I was ready to give this a 4 star rating but even the casting was terrible. (a top female in a remote place - are we really to believe this?) A strong 3 out of 10 tops it I guess.The fake pregnancy was a nice touch and the scare factor in Martin's secret place was top notch though. It's a shame for the stars involved.