|
|
| taking lives
Chief suspect Kiefer Sutherland with Hawke.
For Caruso, the story of Taking Lives “is not so much a who-dunnit as a why-dunnit. The way the case must be solved is by figuring out the reasons for the killer’s behaviour, finding his point of view, and from that, ultimately, discovering who he is.”
This leads Jolie’s character into a number of very difficult situations, and ultimately brings her into contact with small-time art dealer James Costa (Ethan Hawke), who has interrupted one of the killer’s attempts at murder, saved the victim, then found himself suspected of the murder. Finally, because he knows what he looks like, Costa agrees against his better nature to become the bait to catch the killer.
“He’s kind of caught red-handed with a dead body,” says Hawke. “It becomes his job then to convince Agent Scott and the police that he’s innocent, and the only way to prove his innocence is to help them find the killer, so he goes along even though he’d much rather just get back to his normal life. He has a gallery opening coming up and that was the most important thing on his mind until all this happened. But he doesn’t want to look like a coward in front of this female FBI agent, so he’s tempted to take on more risk than he can handle.”
The final part of the jigsaw is provided by Kiefer Sutherland who, in the role of the key suspect, could hardly be more different from his convention-defying good guy in the hit TV series 24. But the same qualities that made him so successful in the role of Jack Bauer account for the menace he brings to his character.
“Kiefer’s a scary guy,” says Taking Lives producer Bernie Goldmann. “He has such intensity. He can convey a sense of menace without raising his voice or raising his hand; and he seems, on screen, so much more physically threatening than he is in reality. I believe it comes through his eyes and the way he holds his body, the way he moves. He can just look at you and you want to back away. Then, when you hang out with him after a scene wraps, he goes back to being the sweetest, nicest guy in the world, so you know he has a real gift.”
Sutherland also, as Caruso soon discovered, has a director’s eye for coverage (not surprisingly, since the actor has two features and a TV drama to his credit as a director). The discovery came in a scene in which Jolie pursues him through the crowded streets of downtown Montreal - a sequence shot in among the crowds leaving the city’s International Jazz Festival.
“I was on a motorcycle holding a camera and so was the director of photography, grabbing as much as we could,” he remembers. “When we finished, Kiefer came over and said, ‘I think you missed two of my look-backs because there was a girl in a red sweater and a guy with a black jacket who got in the way’. Sure enough, when we watched the take, there it was. I thought, ‘Here’s a guy who’s running as fast as he can through a crowd with a motorcycle chasing him and he knows exactly the moments that were blocked!’”
The city of Montreal - and nearby Quebec City, which stood in for it in certain scenes - adds a definite degree of strangeness to the story, putting Jolie’s character on the outside in more senses than one: ostracised by her fellow cops, threatened by a serial killer and more than a little vulnerable as a result of the unknown city.
“By placing the American FBI agent into a predominantly French-speaking city with a distinctive European look, it illustrates her separateness,” explains Caruso. “She’s an outsider and a loner here - excluded from the camaraderie of the local police department and the tight partnership of the lead detectives, living in a hotel, unsure of her way around and unable to carry a gun until the proper international permits are issued…”
But all of this, insists writer Bokenkamp, is just part of the machinery which makes the genre work. “I love thrillers,” he says. “A good thriller is like a math problem: the answers are there all along; you just have to work them out.”
|
TAKING LIVES
Warner Bros Pictures
presents, in association with Village Roadshow Pictures,
a Mark Canton production
|
|
Prod: Mark Canton, Bernie Goldmann; Exec prod: Bruce Berman, Dana Goldberg, David Heyman; Co-prod: Alan C Blomquist; Dir: DJ Caruso; Scr: Jon Bokenkamp, based on the novel by Michael Pye; Ph: Amir Mokri; Prod des: Tom Southwell; Cost des: Marie-Sylvie Deveau; Ed: Anne V Coates; Mus: Philip Glass.
With Angelina Jolie (Special Agent Illeana Scott), Ethan Hawke (James Costa), Kiefer Sutherland (Hart), Olivier Martinez (Joseph Paquette), Tcheky Karyo (Hugo Leclair), Jean-Hugues Anglade (Emil Duval), Gena Rowlands (Rebecca Asher).
International distribution: Warner Bros Pictures/Village Roadshow Pictures.
|
|
|
|
