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TAKING LIVES
 By Rachel Deahl Review Film Critic Generally, I don't like films that rely on plot twists. More accurately, and specifically, I hate twist endings. The twist ending represents a gimmick, a staple in Hollywood thrillers that, too often, values cinematic trickery over good storytelling.
But audiences love to be fooled, so movies with
trick endings and repeated plot twists aren't going away. In "Taking
Lives," a new thriller about the hunt for a Canadian serial killer, the
plot twist is certainly alive and well. Thankfully the cheap device is put to
relatively good use in this spooky, popcorn tale that recalls some of the
finer films in this genre without ever quite matching them.
"Taking Lives" opens in a Canadian train
station in 1983. An awkward-looking teenager with oversized glasses and
shaggy, unkempt hair (Paul Dano) buys a one-way bus ticket to - well,
'somewhere else'. On the bus he meets another teen breaking away from his
family, a charismatic and handsome kid, who offers him a beer. When the bus
breaks down, the two rent a car and continue their journey towards greener
pastures.
After getting a flat tire, the dorky, quiet
one, who introduced himself as Martin, unleashes a sudden burst of insanity
when, while his new friend kneels down to fix the flat, he launches the poor
fellow into the path of an oncoming truck. After the murder Martin soothes his
former traveling companion, now about to expire, before bashing his face in
with a rock and walking off into the surrounding fields (literally green
pastures) with the kid's guitar and ID.
This long and effective lead-in makes way for
the opening credits, which displays the names in the impressive cast -
Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Olivier Martinez, Kiefer Sutherland and
Gena Rowlands - over eerie shots of microfilm newspaper clippings
documenting unsolved murder cases.
The look and feel of the sequence, replete with
shots of someone (presumably the killer), shaving off excess skin cells from
his fingertips, is reminiscent of "Seven." Although "Taking Lives"
comes closest to matching the intelligent, moody and unnerving feel of David
Fincher's masterful thriller in just its opening credits, the film is more
entertaining than most movies of its ilk in recent memory.
Angelina Jolie stars as an unorthodox
FBI agent, known for her reliance on psychology and intuition, who's beckoned
to Montreal to help catch a serial killer on the loose. The profile is a young
male who "takes lives" - he kills other reclusive young men and then literally
takes on their persona, staying in their apartment, dressing in their clothes,
and using their credit cards.
When a successful artist named James Kosta (Ethan Hawke) comes forward claiming to have witnessed the killer at work, the police try to use him as bait. And when Jolie's guarded agent reluctantly falls for Hawke's sweet and charming Kosta, the case becomes even more complicated and personal.
With its French Canadian setting and strong
(rather, strong-looking) cast, "Taking Lives" is elevated above its
genre clichés. The Montreal location, with its disorienting but sexy, feel -
the dialog is mostly in English but the cops occasionally lapse into French --
is ideal as it compliments themes of alienation and loneliness. In this way,
the city of Montreal may emerge as the true star of the movie. Displaying the
city's unusual blend of cosmopolitan urbanity and quaint historicism, the
Montreal shown here leaves more of an impression than the killer.
Grade: B+
NEVER DIE ALONE
Director Ernest Dickerson has been making bad urban dramas for over a decade now. The best entry in his underwhelming filmography is Dickerson's first directorial effort, "Juice" (1992). That "Juice," a predictable tale about a liquor store hold-up concocted by three best friends that goes devastatingly awry, marks the pinnacle of Dickerson's career is a rather indicative statement about his newest film, "Never Die Alone." A pastiche of gangster cliches and black urban stereotypes, this rote tale of the rise and fall of a megalomaniacal Los Angeles kingpin is, at its best, unnecessary and, at its worst, offensive.
Billed as an urban noir and based on the Donald
Goines novel of the same name, DMX stars as a fallen druglord known on
the streets as King David. When a white journalist (Daivd Arquette),
who enjoys hanging out at his mostly-black, seedy neighborhood dive bar,
witnesses a shooting, he drives the dying victim to the hospital.
The victim winds up being King David, an
infamous local druglord who was recently released from prison. Arquette's
scribe surprisingly inherits all of David's earthly possessions - most notably
a pimped out Ford and a series of audiotapes. The tapes prove to be David's
audio bibliography and, as the journalist listens, DMX narrates from the grave
about his life of crime.
A less noir than overwrought gangster epic,
"Never Die Alone" proves to be another melodramatic, poorly crafted
attempt at reinventing (or is it repeating?) Brian De Palma's "Scarface."
Dickerson seems most occupied with chronicling the misogynistic, hedonistic
and sadistic ways of his antihero. David, whose trademark move is to swap his
girlfriends' coke for crack (thereby turning them into totally dependant
pawns), runs his business with the unfortunate 'screw everyone' attitude that
finally earns him a bullet in the back. (He gets his comeuppance when an
illegitimate son, played by Michael Ealy, shoots him in the opening
scene.)
The moral? I suppose it's that you should never
leave your bastard children to grow up with a grudge after they watch you beat
up and abandon their crack-addicted mother.
Although newcomer Michael Ealy (who appears in
the "Barbershop" movies as well) shows the charisma of a superstar, "Never
Die Alone" is essentially a despicable film with despicable characters.
Aside from Ealy's revenge-seeking son, who
mostly lurks in alleyways as he tries to hunt down the recently released King
David, none of the characters in the film are interesting or sympathetic.
If Dickerson was interested in crafting a
gangster epic, he should have spent more time crafting interesting characters
as opposed to predictable plot lines. There's always room for another
interesting gangster film or noir on screens, but hopefully everyone's had
their fill of black, urban dramas in which the women are all portrayed as
gold-digging bitches, or crack whores (or both) while the drug-dealing men go
about abusing them and killing each other.
In the end, Dickerson's film is just bad;
what's most unfortunate is that it needlessly propagates more negative
stereotypes in the process.
Grade: F
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