Movie Monday: Taking Lives

While our 23-year old son was home sick the week after Christmas, he and my husband and I watched a few movies together. The first was a creepy thriller from 2004 called Taking Lives, starring Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke.

The movie opens in the 80's, with a runaway teen named Martin Asher on a bus to Canada. He meets another guy about his age and along the way, he kills him and takes his guitar and wallet before heading off. Flash-forward to the present, where Angelina Jolie plays Illeana, an FBI profiler who has been called to Quebec to help police there with a serial killer case. The killer appears to be Martin Asher, who takes on the identity of each victim; Martin's mother thinks she saw Martin recently in the city. In the most recent case, there is no physical evidence but they have a break-through: an eye witness who was at the site of the murder and saw the killer. Ethan Hawke plays the witness, an artist named James Costa. There is some chemistry between him and Illeana, but he's a key part of the case. The rest of the movie deals with Illeana and the local police tracking down the killer and wondering how reliable the eye witness account is.

This is a super suspenseful and creepy thriller - the kind that keeps surprising you and makes you want to leave the lights on! Both Jolie and Hawke inhabit their roles beautifully, pulling the viewer into the story. The rest of the cast is just as good, with Keifer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez, and Jean-Hughues Anglade playing other law enforcement officials.  This taut and twisty thriller kept us all rapt, right up to the very last moments.

Taking Lives is available on Netflix streaming or available for rent through Amazon, starting at $2.99.  A Director's Cut is also available on DVD.