Another movie review
Mar. 14th, 2004 03:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mousmeI saw "Taking Lives" with Prospero's Daughter last night, and it was probably the best movie I've seen this week.
I think Prospero's Daughter liked it more than I did, but I was nonetheless very favourably impressed with it. It was going along at a decent clip, well-paced if slightly annoying for reasons which I'll explain in a moment, and proving to be an okay if predictable and somehow vaguely unsatisfying movie, when suddenly it reached out and grabbed us all by our guts and threw us on the floor and stomped all over our fragile psyches.
I kid you not.
Somehow, in the space of about twenty minutes, the final minutes of the movie turned to the truly dark, disturbing and drastically bizarre, but in a good way.
It also made just about every single woman in the theatre scream in absolute horror. I can't say more than that, but I will add: "Oy, vey!"
The plot is simple enough: Angelina Jolie plays an FBI profiler brought in to consult on the case of a serial killer in Montreal (yay, Canada!) who takes on the identity of his victims.
There are some very neat twists in the plot, which I won't reveal.
I have some quibbles. One, the Montreal police are grossly misrepresented. For one thing, they act French. I'm sorry, but this is CANADA. We are not FRENCH, dammit! For another thing, they are more incompetent than a pack of gibbering mentally retarded monkeys. They are consistently unprofessional and can barely handle a crime scene. Come ON, folks! There's an officer killed in the line of duty because he leaves a key witness alone at a crucial juncture during the case. They also spend lots of time running around waving their guns about (which police in Montreal never do, because the minute they unholster their guns around here they also unholster vast amounts of paperwork to be completed to justify *why* their guns left their holsters).
And, seriously. FBI? For a serial killer in Canada? Yes, I know, it's for an American audience. But, sheesh! We have our own special agencies that do that in Canada! The Montreal City Urban Police Force may not be North America's most stellar police force, but they're not a pack of incompetent idiots either, and I don't care how hot Angelina Jolie looks in those tight clothes.
Also, not enough Kiefer Sutherland screen time. Way not enough Kiefer Sutherland screen time.
Otherwise, a remarkably well-made movie. And any movie that makes the vast majority of the women in the theatre scream in exactly the same way at the same time (and it wasn't fear, just to give you a hint) can't be all bad. ^_-
I think Prospero's Daughter liked it more than I did, but I was nonetheless very favourably impressed with it. It was going along at a decent clip, well-paced if slightly annoying for reasons which I'll explain in a moment, and proving to be an okay if predictable and somehow vaguely unsatisfying movie, when suddenly it reached out and grabbed us all by our guts and threw us on the floor and stomped all over our fragile psyches.
I kid you not.
Somehow, in the space of about twenty minutes, the final minutes of the movie turned to the truly dark, disturbing and drastically bizarre, but in a good way.
It also made just about every single woman in the theatre scream in absolute horror. I can't say more than that, but I will add: "Oy, vey!"
The plot is simple enough: Angelina Jolie plays an FBI profiler brought in to consult on the case of a serial killer in Montreal (yay, Canada!) who takes on the identity of his victims.
There are some very neat twists in the plot, which I won't reveal.
I have some quibbles. One, the Montreal police are grossly misrepresented. For one thing, they act French. I'm sorry, but this is CANADA. We are not FRENCH, dammit! For another thing, they are more incompetent than a pack of gibbering mentally retarded monkeys. They are consistently unprofessional and can barely handle a crime scene. Come ON, folks! There's an officer killed in the line of duty because he leaves a key witness alone at a crucial juncture during the case. They also spend lots of time running around waving their guns about (which police in Montreal never do, because the minute they unholster their guns around here they also unholster vast amounts of paperwork to be completed to justify *why* their guns left their holsters).
And, seriously. FBI? For a serial killer in Canada? Yes, I know, it's for an American audience. But, sheesh! We have our own special agencies that do that in Canada! The Montreal City Urban Police Force may not be North America's most stellar police force, but they're not a pack of incompetent idiots either, and I don't care how hot Angelina Jolie looks in those tight clothes.
Also, not enough Kiefer Sutherland screen time. Way not enough Kiefer Sutherland screen time.
Otherwise, a remarkably well-made movie. And any movie that makes the vast majority of the women in the theatre scream in exactly the same way at the same time (and it wasn't fear, just to give you a hint) can't be all bad. ^_-
