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| taking lives
TAKE YOUR PARTNERS
Right, FBI profiler Illeana Scott in action with reluctant Montreal detective Joseph Paquette (Olivier Martinez) and, below, with reluctant witness James Costa (Ethan Hawke).
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“I’ve visited the scene of a crime at 2.00 am to see it exactly as the killer had seen it,” he says, “because seeing it at 2.00 in the afternoon isn’t the same. You need to approach it in the same light level, observe everything the killer may have seen from his point of view.”
One interesting point about Pye’s novel is that it doesn’t actually have Jolie’s character in it: she is an invention of screenwriter Jon Bokenkamp, who wanted a way to put the film’s killer in a different kind of perspective.
“I wanted to tell his story and, at the same time, offer an intimate look at the people who would be tracking him,” says the writer. “Ultimately, I arrived at the idea of Illeana Scott, a woman who lives for her job, and whose personal history is every bit as unknown and intriguing as the killer’s.”
“OFTEN, IN FILMS, YOU SEE THE WOMAN FROM THE
FBI AND SHE’S COOL AND TOUGH, NEVER A HESITATION.
BUT THIS WOMAN ISN’T LIKE THAT. SHE’S FLAWED.
THERE ARE SECRETS IN HER PAST”
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Setting the story in Montreal added a further twist: Scott is invited in by the detective in charge of the case, Hugo Leclair (French star Tcheky Karyo), causing all sorts of problems with her fellow cops (Olivier Martinez and Jean-Hugues Anglade, two more stalwarts of the French screen), who do very little to make her feel at home. This renders Jolie’s character especially vulnerable in a city which she doesn’t know, whose language she doesn’t speak, and where she is initially not even allowed to carry a gun.
But then, that was a side of the character that especially appealed to Jolie. “Often, in films, you see the woman from the FBI and she’s cool and tough, never a hesitation,” says the actress, who played a cop in a not dissimilar situation in The Bone Collector (1999). “But this woman isn’t like that. She’s strong and intelligent but also very human. She’s flawed. There are secrets in her past.
“Illeana is a profiler and is therefore extremely sensitive,” adds Jolie. “I did a lot of research on profilers and the work they do, and I find there’s something very sensual about them. They watch everything, from the way people move their hands and feet to what they say and why they do things in a specific manner. They’re acute observers, which makes this a very interesting part to play.”
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