Taking Lives

Variety Todd McCarthy

A somber, absorbing thriller that treads familiar psycho serial killer terrain with style. Elegantly made and comparatively restrained in cramming sick and grisly stuff down the audience's throat.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

A certain genre of thriller depends more upon style and tone than upon plot; it doesn't matter if you believe it walking out, as long as you were intrigued while it was happening.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Stephen Cole

If only Taking Lives had given Jolie a greater foil than Ethan Hawke -- a young Kevin Spacey or Jack Nicholson say -- the film might have been a B-movie classic.

Premiere Peter Debruge

Sexy, stylish, and legitimately suspenseful.

New York Post Megan Lehmann

Smarter than your average serial-killer movie, thanks to unusually fleshed-out characters inhabited by a high- pedigree cast.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

The movie voids a lot of good will with a cheesy ending. This is just the kind of denouement I was hoping Taking Lives wouldn't sink to, yet it does.

The Hollywood Reporter Kirk Honeycutt

Clearly, much care and intelligence have been lavished on discouraging, routine material.

The New York Times Dana Stevens

From a technical standpoint, Taking Lives is competent and sometimes even impressive. It is cleanly edited and nicely shot -- at times as cool and rich as a York Peppermint Pattie. Beyond that, there is not much to say.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

By the time we get to the unsurprising surprise ending, what seemed innovative and challenging in Taking Lives has lost its juice and reverted to formula form, and we leave the theater with that same old let-down feeling of having endured a ritual one more time.

San Francisco Chronicle Carla Meyer

The tense, stylish thriller turns into soft-core, slapdash psychodrama.

New York Daily News Jami Bernard

Ho-hum, another serial-killer thriller. Even with Angelina Jolie thrown in for forensic sex appeal, this dog won't hunt.

Film Threat Stina Chyn

Has a lot going for it, but two-thirds of the way through, things fall apart. The film’s weaknesses are directly tied to the narrative.

Philadelphia Inquirer Steven Rea

If Taking Lives starts off with a modicum of wit and creepy-crawly scares, it winds up somewhere else altogether: in the cliche-strewn land of preposterous red herrings.

Christian Science Monitor David Sterritt

No amount of technical skill can substitute for genuine shivers, and in the fright department this picture rarely lives up to its hype.

TV Guide Maitland McDonagh

This multiple-twist thriller gets off to a fine, creepy start but eventually becomes too preposterous for its own good.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

After ''Seven'' and three ''Hannibal'' hits, the audience tolerance for baroque serial-killer flourishes has been duly amped. We require sustained creativity in our sick violence, and Taking Lives, after a token bit of ghastly foreplay, loses its life.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

By the pseudo-shocking end, we're half-entertained by the dedicated cast and half-lulled to sleep by the dull, overfamiliar sounds they make.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

Sadly, Taking Lives, adapted from a novel by Michael Pye, proves to be one long wallow in elements that have long since had their effectiveness dulled flat.

Slate David Edelstein

Caruso is a much more resourceful director than this material deserves, but I resented being two steps ahead of the genius profiler and the genius serial-killer.

Empire Jo Berry

It's not hard to figure it out, but Caruso manages to throw in some tense moments that almost -- but sadly not quite -- make up for the film's daft ending.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

On the plus side, it isn't boring, and Jolie and Ethan Hawke, who plays an art dealer and key witness, generate a certain amount of edgy chemistry. But eventually the filmmakers' desire to shock and tease overtakes any feeling for character or common sense.

Los Angeles Times Manohla Dargis

It's slick nonsense at best and for the first hour it's watchable. There's cheap entertainment to be had from a thriller in which two detectives are played by beauties as ravishing as Jolie and Martinez.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

The serial-killer thriller of the week, should have gotten a life of its own instead of trying to steal it from Michael Pye's novel of the same name and several other movies.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

Even though Taking Lives is not very good, it does contain a) a cool car chase and b) a sex scene in which Jolie goes topless. For some, this will be enough entertainment.

Village Voice Ed Gonzalez

If the Naqoyqatsi-lite score by Philip Glass doesn't exactly make sense of the film's sketchy identity politics, it does complement its utter ridiculousness.

Dallas Observer Luke Y. Thompson

The film's finale is truly egregious, a laugh-out-loud combination of ludicrousness and sadism that someone somewhere probably found scary, assuming they never saw a thriller before.

Washington Post Michael O'Sullivan

Nosedive it does, abandoning all pretense of style and eccentricity for at-times laughable predictability and a parade of unconvincing red herrings straight out of Murder Mystery 101.

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Taking Lives would have to work nights to reach mediocrity.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

If you can buy the pillow-lipped Angelina Jolie as a psychic FBI agent in Montreal to hunt a serial killer, then you can swallow the other implausibilities in this retread thriller.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

Because the characters in the movie have only stock obsessions and vague personal histories, there's no reason to be interested in them.

USA Today Mike Clark

The trouble with indulging Taking Lives is that it's taking your time.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Caruso, who showed flair in the Val Kilmer vehicle "The Salton Sea," has a penchant for the dark side. In this case, it's the plodding, predictable ZIP code of the dark side.

Austin Chronicle Marrit Ingman

A twist ending in search of its movie.

Salon.com Charles Taylor

Jolie is far too good for this tripe but she does give the film its only believable moments, and for the first half, her concentration makes you watch her intently.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Pretty much the worst recent example of a genre.