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Taking Lives takes a rather more sinister step into the world of identity theft. In this movie, the motivation is much more than just cash. In Taking Lives, the victim does not only lose his identity – he very quickly loses his life also.
A serial killer is on the loose. The method ... Read review
FBI profiler Illeana Scott is called in by French Canadian police to catch a serial killer ... more
who takes on the identity of each new victim. Alone in an unfamiliar city with no one she can trust agent Scott suddenly finds herself on a twisted and terrifyi...
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An elusive serial killer is on the loose, ruthlessly murdering victims and then assuming ... more
their identities. But now there's a breakthrough and FBI profiler Illeana Scott has been assigned to the case.This edgy cat-and-mouse thriller sees Scott meeting h...
"Two boys ride the bus through Florida. One of them won't be alive much longer." With ... more
this simple and unforgettable opening hook, Michael Pye establishes himself as a gripping thriller writer. (He has previously written historical novels and a history of New York.) The boys on the bus are Seth Goodman, an all-American innocent, and a 17-year-old Dutch youth called Martin Arkenhout. Almost by accident, Arkenhout discovers that he has a genius for taking lives: not just killing people -- although he is pretty proficient at that too -- but also appropriating their entire identities, submersing himself in them, and becoming them.Narrated in an edgy, nerve-jangling present tense throughout, Arkenhout moves from victim to victim, re-inventing himself in the most radical and absolute way imaginable, until finally he picks the wrong victim: a seemingly mild-mannered art historian called Christopher Hart, who seems like a safe choice and turns out to be anything but. Add this toTaking Lives'irresistible claim--"This book is a work of fiction. The criminal who inspired it is still at large"--and you have a very superior thriller. Fans of Ruth Rendell, Thomas Harris or Michael Dibdin won't be disappointed.--James Goldman
Postage & Packaging:£2.75 Availability:Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
"Two boys ride the bus through Florida. One of them won't be alive much longer." With ... more
this simple and unforgettable opening hook, Michael Pye establishes himself as a gripping thriller writer. (He has previously written historical novels and a history of New York.) The boys on the bus are Seth Goodman, an all-American innocent, and a 17-year-old Dutch youth called Martin Arkenhout. Almost by accident, Arkenhout discovers that he has a genius for taking lives: not just killing people -- although he is pretty proficient at that too -- but also appropriating their entire identities, submersing himself in them, and becoming them. Narrated in an edgy, nerve-jangling present tense throughout, Arkenhout moves from victim to victim, re-inventing himself in the most radical and absolute way imaginable, until finally he picks the wrong victim: a seemingly mild-mannered art historian called Christopher Hart, who seems like a safe choice and turns out to be anything but. Add this to Taking Lives' irresistible claim--"This book is a work of fiction. The criminal who inspired it is still at large"--and you have a very superior thriller. Fans of Ruth Rendell, Thomas Harris or Michael Dibdin won't be disappointed. --James Goldman
Postage & Packaging:£2.75 Availability:Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days...
Thriller - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Timothy West, Neil Morrissey, Tara Fitzgerald, Annette Crosbie, Pauline Quirke, Rob Brydon, Denise Van Outen, John Thomson, Kevin Whately, David Suchet
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: K.C. Bascombe - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Jesse James, Rachel Skarsten, Charles Powell, Linda Purl, Kevin Zegars
Production Year: 2002 - Thriller - Director: Bharat Nalluri, Rob Bailey, Andy Wilson - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring: Matthew MacFadyen, Keeley Hawes, David Oyelowo, Peter Firth, Jenny Agutter, Lisa Faulkner
Advantages: Won't you ride with me? Disadvantages: Se7en wannabe
...moves on.
Taking Lives takes a rather more sinister step into the world of identity theft. In this movie, the motivation is much more than just cash. In Taking Lives, the victim does not only lose his identity – he very quickly loses his life also.
A serial killer is on the loose. The method of murder remains largely the same with each victim, whereby the face is beaten to a pulp. The police are making little progress ... ...countless other serial killer movies, Taking Lives really is nothing terribly new. Playing to a tried and tested formula, the ingredients are all there. Firstly, we have a beautiful, yet vulnerable young FBI agent, upon whose perception the police are relying to solve the case. A dark, broody policeman follows next, opposed to the FBI presence and determined to make things as unpleasant for her as possible. A civilian witness to whom the FBI agent ... more
You may have heard of a modern-day crime called “identity theft”. It’s a fairly new phenomenon, where criminals fraudulently use your details to elicit unauthorised sums of money. In some cases, this tends to be a fairly isolated incident, but it is not uncommon for identity theft to be protracted and damaging. In most cases, the perpetrator will move on before his/her identity is discovered. The motivation is only money, and once that becomes too risky, the identity thief simply moves on.
Taking Lives takes a rather more sinister step into the world of identity theft. In this movie, the motivation is much more than just cash. In Taking Lives, the victim does not only lose his identity – he very quickly loses his life also.
A serial killer is on the loose. The method of murder remains largely the same with each victim, whereby the face is beaten to a pulp. The police are making little progress and an FBI profiler named Illeana is asked to go to French Canada to help the authorities track down the killer before the death toll rises once more. But finding the killer is no easy matter. The only clue rests with a young artist named Costa, who witnesses one of the killings outside his health club. But who is tracking who? A mysterious man is already watching Costa from the shadows…..
Clearly inspired by countless other serial killer movies, Taking Lives really is nothing terribly new. Playing to a tried and tested formula, the ingredients are all there. Firstly, we have a beautiful, yet vulnerable young FBI agent, upon whose perception the police are relying to solve the case. A dark, broody policeman follows next, opposed to the FBI presence and determined to make things as unpleasant for her as possible. A civilian witness to whom the FBI agent finds herself unswervingly attracted adds some romantic interest to things and finally a nut case with a hidden identity wanders round and stalks the lot of them. You could never really go into this movie expecting great things.
And if you did, you’d be disappointed, because there really is nothing great here. There is good, but there is also bad – and a bit of downright awful too.
The film opens well – very well, in fact. The first ten minutes are tense, intriguing and really quite shocking. Did anyone else see that one coming? Sadly, this is probably the best section of the movie, and the shocks and thrills are generally few and far between, hereafter. Angelina Jolie (Illeana) is generally a rather over-rated actress in my opinion, and in Taking Lives she plays the game very safely. As the film progresses, you get rather bored of her attempts to pout enigmatically, and any attempt to be emotional is relegated strictly to the amateur school of acting. There’s a horrifically unsexy sex scene, which seems to exist only for the sake of its own existence and it is only really in the last two minutes of the film that I swayed towards slightly liking the character.
The other characters don’t fare much better either. The young French Canadian policeman Paquette (Olivier Martinez) is lively, passionate (and sexy) but his presence in the film seems rather contrived. Just as handsome English men normally turn out to be the bad guy, handsome young French men will turn out to be rebellious, misogynistic hard men and Paquette is no exception. As soon as Costa (Ethan Hawke) arrives on the scene, you just know that Jolie is going to fall for his charms and it then becomes a case of waiting for the inevitable to happen.
The story is a strange mixture of “serial killing by numbers” with just enough twists thrown in to keep things interesting. The pace doesn’t work – a jolt of action, followed by a lull and then a burst of renewed action before the pace slows again. Any attempt to build suspense or intrigue in the film fails clumsily and the detective work is actually very hard to find as well. The whole concept of profilers always sits very awkwardly with me, as writers very often seem to rely on the perception of such characters to save the day, with plausibility disappearing out of the window. The strange thing about Taking Lives is that if I sit and think back now as to how the police solve the case, I’m not entirely sure how it was done. The FBI profiler strikes again, I think.
I did say that there were good things about this film, however and that remains the case. The French Canadian setting works extremely well – it’s not only Jolie that provides the eye candy. The sumptuous, historic setting adds an extra quality to the film that would surely have been missing had the film been set in New York or Los Angeles. The opening scene is extremely effective and strangely enough, I also found the climax rather satisfying in an unexpected way. It must have been the lull of the rest of the film, but I hadn’t really seen this coming, contrary to the many other reviewers who have expressed an opinion in the press.
Nonetheless, the very disappointing thing for me in this film was the rather shallow exploration of the serial killer. The whole idea of the killer taking on the victim’s identity is not really examined properly, and the audience is left to assume and gloss over the many plot holes that exist. The film is constructed in a deliberately confusing way, using red herrings and dead end plot threads to keep you guessing, but this finally undermines your ability to accept things as they are presented. I think it is a fair reflection of the film that by the time it had finished, I didn’t really care about any of the characters or what happened to them. If serial killer films really are your thing then the likes of Se7en and The Silence of the Lambs will – and should – remain classics of the genre, with Taking Lives providing only a very superficial level of entertainment in the mean time. Despite one or two moments of semi-gore, it really isn’t nasty enough to call itself a classic.
Not a terrible movie, by any means, but not recommended either.
Advantages: A fairly decent story, some good ideas Disadvantages: Not going to win any awards, there are better films in this genre out there
...I’d heard a lot about Taking Lives, with Jolie and Hawke apparently having off screen liaisons, well according to the Sun. When it came to the film actually being released I didn’t notice it at the cinema and it wasn’t until the DVD release that I even remembered reading about it. So the other night I decided, as there was nothing on Tele as usual, to stick it in the DVD player and see if it was any good.
The film begins in the 80’s with two guys ... ...than wait around they agree to split the cost of a rental car. After a while the car gets a puncture and whilst trying to fix it, one of the guys pushes the other in-front of an oncoming van. He steals his wallet and makes sure the guy is dead before wandering off across the hills. We’re then brought up to the present day and a body has been discovered on a building site. The police then bring in experienced FBI profiler Illeana Scott (Angelina Jolie) ...
Andy.mack 18.11.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Taking Lives (DVD)
Advantages: Great storyline Disadvantages: A little Far-fetched
Taking Lives is the serial killer thriller with an all star cast namely Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland & Oliver Martinez. Taking Lives was released on 16th March 2004 & was a flop at the box office. It had a budget of $45 million & grossed $65 million at the box office so was quite disappointing however when it was released on DVD it spent 3 straight weeks at the top of the charts in America. It's directed by D. J. Caruso who also ... ...I bought this DVD from play.com about 6 months ago & it cost me £5. It has some great special features on it including;
Crime Lab: A Documentary
Gag Reel
Trailer
Promotional Trailer for 'Troy'
Interactive Menu
Scene Access Bodies Of Evidence
Puzzle Within A Puzzle
This is the story about a serial killer who assumes his victims identities. It's a bit far-fetched but is still chilling enough to keep you enthralled. At first you see the killer ...
Great_reviewer07 30.01.2009
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Taking Lives (DVD)
Advantages: I won't even list them because there is no reason to go see this. Disadvantages: Just don't go see it.
Okay, let us give 3 cheers for the worst writing on the planet. *hurray* ... *hurray* ... *hurray* Okay, but seriously, this movie is god awful - maybe the worst ever - considering how much it had going for it. But before I give a VERY detailed explanation for why this sucked let's marvel at all the 'plus' points:
1. Angelina Jolie
Let's face it people, she is not only smoking hot but she is extremely talented as well. (duh right?) - Plus she gets ... ...I know that's a plus factor for any guys who thought about seeing it.
2. Gena Rowlands
Okay, I may be the only person under 50 or 60 to think this woman is also smoking hot as well but that is beside the point, the woman is also an extreme talent. 3. Kieffer Sutherland Okay, if you weren't a fan of his ‘Lost Boys’ years there is always the dynamic smash hit FOX television series: ‘24’ to put him on the smoking hot list. And (in my totally unhumble ...
Coyote98 22.03.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Taking Lives (DVD)
Advantages: Suspensful, Angelina Jolie, ood production Values Disadvantages: Eathen Hawke, Bad script
...and to a certain extent Taking Lives to. For the first half of the story, she just has to be confident and arrogant. But as the film moves on, her character has to fight more and more, personal demons, Angelina’s performance becomes better and better. One scene in particular when she is in the shower. Is particularly heart breaking and potent. When you watch her. Acting seems almost effortless, she can make the audience engage with her, whichever ... ...Good commanding performance.
Script
Taking lives, doesn’t have a very good script, it’s unoriginal, and limp. But it does cause a few shocks and is intriguing. But still trash. The script is particularly awful, for the first half of the movie, but as the movie goes on. The script just gets more and more unbelievable. Which is usually a bad thing, but not in this case, as the problem with the beginning is that it takes its self too seriously? The ...
JayHall1991 16.10.2004
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of Taking Lives (DVD)
...man has a habit of taking over the lives and personalities of his victims. He is likened to a hermit crab, after he out grows one shell he moves into another.For twenty years this serial killer has been able to stay out of the lime light. But that is about to change when Illeana Scott is called in on a case. It is her job to profile the killer. She starts off in a gruesome murder case where the victim was strangled from behind, his face has been ... ...her investigation by lying in the grave of the victim. She completely absorbs the very being of a victim. She tapes the pictures of the dead bodies (no matter how gross they may look) up on a chair and have dinner with them as if it will aid her in solving the case. In her bedroom she has the pictures taped to her ceiling, as if sleeping with them will allow the victims to call out to her for relief. This latest killer has a cat and mouse way of ...
loveofnight 06.09.2009 (07.09.2009)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: helpful Review of Taking Lives (DVD)
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Advantages: Amazing dvd get in there Disadvantages: not long enougth- WE want more!!!
OMG what can i say about this dvd, its flipping amazing! You got to love take that!
If you dont know who Take That are then where the hell have you been since 1990? Take that have got to be one of the most popular boy bands of the 90's who sadly split in 1996 but came back to dazzle us in 2006 with there reforming and the release of there new album beautiful world which sold over 1.3million coppies it was clear we were all ready for take that fever again.
Ok so back to the dvd i had it for mothers day 2008 and i must say it was a wonderful suprise if not something that i had hinted for but did not think that i would ever get it, so as soon as i opened it it went straight into the dvd player!
The dvd is around 2hrs long from start to finish but you have the option of being able to pick which songs you want to listen to ...
Advantages: No excessive bad language or smut, can be enjoyed by all! Disadvantages: Had to clear up my cousin's sick!
From start to finish Michael McIntyre ("Mock the week", "Have I got news for you") keeps you engaged and enchanted with his sincere sense of humour. Much like a slightly less animated Lee Evans, his social observation and self ridicule can be warmly related to and enjoyed without the use of excessive bad language or smut! I was particularly impressed by the amount of material he performs without turning to the audience to mickey take. The DVD itself is basic but does have Michael?s "Live at the Apollo" set as a little bonus extra! Over all I would say this is an excellent buy and a great watch that can be enjoyed from son to grandmum! Oh, I watched this with my cousin a few days after he come out of hospital from a stomach op'.. He couldn't stop laughing no matter how much it hurt till eventually he was sick, true story! ...
Advantages: Great Gig, Great Xtras Disadvantages: Visual Quality Poorer than expected.
Live after death is simply one of the best known live releases from the band. It is simply one of the best 80s performances by the band but not the best in my opinion, as fantastic as live after death is i still preferred maiden england and Somewhere on Tour only because the range of songs is larger by the inclusion of somewhere in time and seventh son, and the quality of the gigs are better. That takes me to the quality of live after death on DVD. There is no doubt the sound has been remastered to excellence but the visuals do look a bit too grainy compared to the effort put into the sound. The extras on the DVD are really good and contain quite a bit of extra content but again the quality of the extras is poor especially the added Rock in Rio 85 extra in which the quality is poor but it wasn't a remastered edition. Overall live after ...
"...TAKING LIVES is a slick, stylish, sexy thriller that always keeps you guessing..." (Clay Smith) (Access Hollywood, )
"...A cut above most serial killer movies with great performances..." (News of the World, )
"...Completely lifted me out of my seat..." (James Christopher) (The Times, )
DVD Description
With superb investigative skills heightened by uncanny natural instincts, Iliana Scott (Angelina Jolie) is not a typical FBI profiler. This beautiful, no-nonsense Special Agent is a cut above the rest, which is why her old friend Captain Le Claire (Tcheky Karyo) calls her to assist his detectives in Montreal when a brutalized body is discovered in a construction site. A murder the next night provides proof of a serial killer, but this time, there is a witness. Artist James Costa (Ethan Hawke) not only saw the murder, but also tried to save the victim, and is even able to provide a sketch of the killer. The plot only thickens as ultra-dedicated Scott, along with ornery, territorial Detective Paquette (Olivier Martinez) and good-natured Detective Duval (Jean-Hugues Anglade), continue their investigation, linking together numerous similar murders over the years and arriving at a disturbing conclusion. To complicate matters even more, Scott is drawn to their charming key witness, Costa, and finds herself in uncomfortable territory as she fights her romantic impulses in an effort to remain professional. Director D.J. Caruso's (THE SALTON SEA) second feature also stars Keifer Sutherland and Gena Rowlands, and was filmed on location in Canada.
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