Featuring Angelina Jolie as pillow-lipped FBI profiler Illeana Lara Croft Clarice Starling Scott, Taking Lives is such a formulaic serial killer thriller a more fitting title would have been Checking Boxes, because it feels like every item on a serial killer thriller checklist has been thrown in: a Tom Ripley chameleon killer, an unnecessary Dead Ringers twins backstory, male cops antagonised by a female agency interloper with unusual methods, a motorway chase, jump scares as bodies spring out of dark recesses, a cool killer who suddenly cracks and goes goo-goo-ga-ga to reveal just how deeply-rooted his mother complex is, bad police work of the enter-the-dark-room-alone variety (and the leave-the-protected-witness-alone-for-a-quick-mo-to-go-have-a-ciggy-by-the-cop-car variety), blurred professional boundaries as Illeana beds (no, desks) a person of interest in the case, and a protracted denouement where the killer's m.o. - painstakingly compiled by the acutely perceptive profiler - is abandoned for an out-of-character stand-off between cop and culprit in which the identity thief and killer of only male victims for over twenty years suddenly becomes an obsessive stalker, domestic abuser and holder-on of Life's details.
★★☆☆☆
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