TAKING LIVES

FBI special agent Illeana Scott, famous for her intuition and unconventional way of analyzing crime scenes, is called for help by a group of Montreal detectives to shed light on a mysterious murder case. The unusual and bizarre methods she uses to trace the criminal profile of the killer soon lead her to the trail of a ferocious serial killer who, over the past twenty years, has killed numerous innocents by assuming their identities. Thanks to the help of an eyewitness, the police will gradually get closer to the dangerous criminal, realizing, however, very soon that they are facing a man more cunning and lethal than they would have ever imagined. Since talented directors like David Fincher or Jonathan Demme have given the big screen masterpieces like "Seven" and "The Silence of the Lambs," there is no serial thriller that does not suffer the comparison (right or wrong that it may be) with its predecessors. And unfortunately, in most cases, this comparison does not hold up. To be honest, "Identity Theft" left us with high hopes, both for the intriguing structure of the trailer and for the first minutes of the screening, capable of piquing the viewer's curiosity not a little: already from the initial title, however, a faded photocopy of the opening credits of the already mentioned "Seven," one begins to intuit that something is not working as it should. The promising prologue gives way to a film that quickly loses itself in a series of overused clichés typical of the genre: gruesome details in close-up (truly a bit self-serving), dark rooms and searches by torchlight (but why are there always no lights in houses? Electricians of the world, rebel!), unsettling fetishes and dolls everywhere, all constructed, however, too artificially to create a deviant and crazy atmosphere. And that's why in reality it doesn't succeed. As if that were not enough, the habit of the savvy viewer not to accept the first intuitions of the investigators and to imagine unexpected future developments leads one to guess with a good dose of certainty the identity of the killer before the police even get on the right track. "Identity Theft" lacks the necessary dose of tension, lacks the palpable and concrete perception of the serial killer's madness, lacks the feeling of futile search and the shared frustration empathetically with the investigators: the presence of a witness and a composite sketch already after less than half an hour of the film removes the possibility of letting the imagination run wild and turns us into passive spectators of an otherwise rather unpleasant spectacle. The plot twists are predictable and useless, the psychological construction of the characters is almost entirely non-existent, and the sequences follow one another without the slightest thrill, so that for much of the film we will find almost nothing interesting on the screen, with the exception of the splendid protagonist. And it is indeed she who captures the viewer's attention: Angelina Jolie is beautiful, sensual, intriguing, and the director enjoys presenting her in all sorts of ways. With her hair tied back, with her hair loose, in a white shirt, in a black shirt, in tight t-shirts, in a robe, and finally half-naked in the throes of passion. Around so much ostentatious splendor, nothing: the acting (if by acting we mean communicative and expressive ability) is practically almost entirely absent, starting with the co-protagonist Ethan Hawke, unpleasant and monochromatic as usual. It then remains impossible to explain why the director D.J. Caruso, in his first film after numerous experiences in TV series (to which, by the way, we recommend he return), having at his disposal one of the greatest talents of modern cinema, Kiefer Sutherland of "Vanishing" and "Linea Mortale" (to name a few), returned to the spotlight thanks to the splendid series "24," decides to give him two nonsensical lines and film him only for a few incomprehensible seconds. A real waste... The 2003/2004 film season continues on its degrading path of headless mediocrity.