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Starring: Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, Olivier Martinez, Gena Rowlands
Directed by: D.J. Caruso
Screenplay by: David Ayer, Jon Bokenk
Release Date: March 19th, 2004
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence including disturbing images, language, sexuality.
Box Office: $32,682,342 (US total)
Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures
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A top FBI profiler, Special Agent Illeana Scott (Academy Award-winner Angelina Jolie) doesn't rely on traditional crime-solving techniques to unravel the mysteries of a murderous mind. Her intuitive, unconventional approach often makes the crucial difference between catching a killer and sending a dead-end case to the cold file.
When Montreal detectives handling a local homicide investigation reluctantly ask for an outsider's help to get inside the head of a cunning serial killer, Agent Scott joins the case. With meticulous insight, she theorizes that the chameleon-like killer is "life-jacking" assuming the lives and identities of his victims.
As the pressure mounts to catch the elusive murderer, Agent Scott's unorthodox methods alienate her from a territorial police team that feels threatened by her uncanny abilities. Her seemingly cold demeanor belies an unparalleled passion for her work, and she's at her best when she's working alone.
But when an unexpected attraction sparks a complicated romantic entanglement, the consummate specialist begins to doubt her finely-honed instincts.
Alone in an unfamiliar city with no one she can trust, Agent Scott suddenly finds herself on a twisted and terrifying journey, surrounded by suspects in a case that has become chillingly personal.
Production Information
“I’m intrigued with the notion of identity – who we are and who we think we are,” says director D.J. Caruso, citing one of the principle themes in Taking Lives, a psychological thriller that pits the expertise of an FBI profiler against the equally expert but twisted mentality of a serial killer.
This is a killer who not only takes the lives of his victims but bizarrely assumes their identities, using their credit cards and living in their homes for weeks or months before moving on to the next target. “He’s life-jacking,” says Caruso, offering a term he coined while preparing for the project. “Not only does this guy, in his mind, become you, but he imagines he’s living your life better than you would potentially live it, and that’s part of his enjoyment.”
From the story’s opening moments, when a body is discovered near a Montreal construction site, it’s clear that this is not a standard murder case. Something about the vicious and ritualistic nature of the crime indicates to local police director Hugo Leclair that he may be dealing with a serial killer, and that prompts him to call on Special Agent Illeana Scott, an FBI profiler, for help. It’s not that he doesn’t trust his own detectives to solve the case; it’s just that tracking such monsters is Agent Scott’s specialty. And if her methods seem a bit peculiar to his staff, so what? What better way to catch an unconventional criminal?
While Taking Lives delivers all the visceral impact audiences expect from a first-class thriller, it also explores a number of deeper and often surprising elements of personality and motive, leading Caruso to muse that “it’s 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 behavior, finding his point of view, and from that, ultimately, discovering who he is.”
“We live in dangerous times and certainly this movie operates on that level, stirs that sense of prickly terror,” says producer Mark Canton, from a perspective spanning more than 20 years as a senior studio executive, filmmaker and fan. “But it also touches on ideas about childhood, alienation and rejection, themes that develop in a person’s life at a very early age and how childhood fantasies sometimes manifest themselves in powerful and destructive ways. As a parent, I find that particularly fascinating. It’s an intelligent story, a smart person’s thriller.”
“You’re never quite sure where the story or the characters are going,” adds producer Bernie Goldmann, like his colleagues a longtime fan of the artfully constructed thriller. “You’re not sure what their back-stories are or their motivations and why they choose to tell people certain things. It’s a lot like life.”
Screenwriter Jon Bokenkamp (Preston Tylk), who adapted the script from the Michael Pye novel, emphasizes strong characterizations as the story’s backbone. “What I loved about Michael’s book was the unique nature of the killer. It makes you wonder, what drives him? What is he hiding from? Thematically, it’s about feeling uncomfortable in your own skin.” It doesn’t hurt that Bokenkamp is fully in his element here. “I love thrillers,” he offers unabashedly. “A good thriller is like a math problem; the answers are there all along, you just have to work them out.”
As Special Agent Illeana Scott, Oscar-winner Angelina Jolie is first seen onscreen lying flat on her back in a freshly opened grave. From this macabre perspective, she then emerges with a number of specific and accurate details, not only about the grave’s former occupant but about the man who put him there: “The killer chose this site specifically, dug it in advance. The corners are neat, symmetrical, the proportions precise,” she observes, also deducing from these details the victim’s height and the likelihood that he was a regular cyclist on the nearby bike path.
As Canton points out, “Agent Scott has her specific methodology and process but, at the same time, the killer is a very smart person who has his own ability, in effect, to profile. This is a man who has spent a great deal of time examining the lives of his victims, learning their habits, so that he can successfully step into their lives. The more involved she gets with the investigation, the more she leaves herself vulnerable.”
The element of vulnerability especially appealed to Jolie, who notes that, “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 strong and intelligent but also very human. She’s flawed. There are secrets in her past. She has what D.J. calls ‘her Chinatown .’
“She is a profiler and is therefore extremely sensitive. 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.”
Jolie was the filmmakers’ first choice, the undisputed front-runner for the role, which requires a blend of intensity and objectivity, strength and vulnerability and, as Canton notes, “the ability to be absolutely forthright in her professional dealings and at the same time completely mysterious about her personal life. Angelina is brilliant. She has thrown herself into this role from day one.”
Crediting the subtlety of certain scenes for allowing images and conversations to take hold in the imagination, Jolie notes that “sometimes these quiet little scenes of a couple of people sitting around having coffee are actually about so much more. The relationships are quite intricate. I loved the script.”
Together, Bokenkamp and the filmmakers developed the character of Agent Scott, who is not in the original Pye novel. As Bokenkamp relates, “the serial killer Michael created was fascinating. Working backwards from that, I wanted to tell his story and at the same time offer an intimate look at the people who would be tracking him. Ultimately, I arrived at the idea of Illeana Scott, a woman who lives for her job, whose personal history is every bit as unknown and intriguing as the killer’s.”
By introducing a female profiler, they also added an undercurrent of romantic tension to the already complex mix of motives, emotions and secrets as the ever-professional Agent Scott finds herself unexpectedly drawn to a key witness in the case. Even if she never acts on her feelings, the very fact that they exist may disqualify her from continuing. At the very least, they could compromise her focus when one mistake could cost another life – possibly her own.
In the pivotal role of local art dealer James Costa, the key witness in the case, the filmmakers cast Oscar-nominee Ethan Hawke. Caught in the wrong place at the right time, Costa interrupts a second murder in progress in a gym parking lot. Scaring the killer off, he desperately attempts CPR on the hopeless victim until relieved by police.
Horrified by what he has seen, Costa is hustled into the police station and interrogated before having a chance to collect his thoughts or even clean the blood from under his fingernails. At first effusively cooperative, he soon realizes the police are suspicious about his story and he becomes incensed. It isn’t until later, when shock, adrenalin and indignation finally fade, that he understands the awful portent of his evening’s harrowing experience: the killer got a good look at him.
Costa has become a target. As such, he’s the best and only hope the police have of catching the killer. It’s almost too much to ask, considering what he’s already been through, as Agent Scott sensitively notes. But Costa agrees to help. Whether it’s his civic duty or his attraction to the beautiful FBI profiler that influences his decision is anybody’s guess.
Hawke reflects on how everything lurches sideways and then upside down in the life of this small-time art dealer who becomes first a Good Samaritan, then a suspect, then a witness and finally the bait for a serial killer – all in the matter of a few hours. “He’s kind of caught red-handed with a dead body. 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.”
To further complicate matters, Hawke concedes, “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.”
Hawke, who has also distinguished himself as a director (Chelsea Walls) and novelist (Ash Wednesday), received critical acclaim as well as Oscar and SAG Award nominations for his performance in the 2001 crime drama Training Day – a performance that remained fresh in the minds of the Taking Lives filmmakers when they cast the Costa role. “He’s a phenomenal talent,” says Canton , “a very serious, intelligent actor who chooses his material carefully. I always thought he was good but in Training Day I watched him raise the bar even higher. He makes us understand why Costa, an ordinary guy, has to push himself so hard.”
In some ways, the relationship between Costa and Agent Scott develops as a reversal on the classic movie stereotype of the hero shielding the vulnerable woman, according to Hawke, who jokingly points out that “Angelina Jolie is really playing the classic leading man in this movie. She’s the male lead and I take the female role.”
This dynamic was no accident. “I’ve always wanted to do a film with a strong female lead and was delighted with the chance to work with Angelina,” says Caruso, who counted on her to convincingly convey “the emotional intensity her character experiences” while simultaneously projecting a no-nonsense professionalism that commands respect from her peers. “She has to be tough to operate in the world that she works in, in a field that is still male-dominated. She’s always been able to maintain the boundary between the work and what little she allows herself of a personal life and it’s very important to her that she knows where to draw that line.”
As Jolie sees it, Costa manages, where others have failed, to really connect with Illeana in a very simple way. “Considering her job, she’s someone that very few people actually talk to on a human level. Most people approach her as an FBI agent and Costa approaches her simply as a man approaches a woman.” Habituated to analyzing everyone through their responses to questions, Illeana is unaccustomed to have someone else ask questions about her own life and, Jolie admits, “It opens her up a bit. It’s hard to resist."
With Costa’s help and the information gleaned from both crime sites, Agent Scott and the Montreal detective team begin to make real progress. But before they can bring a net over their suspect, it appears that he is coming to them – albeit in fleeting glimpses. He’s a figure poised in the half-light of a street festival, chased but lost; a description given by a frightened hotel manager; an angry voice growling in their ears, taunting them.
Kiefer Sutherland, Golden Globe Award winner and two-time Emmy nominee for his headlining performance in the current hit dramatic series 24, takes on the role of this deadly fugitive. Even when he’s not in view he’s being talked about, analyzed, feared and anticipated to the extent that his shadowy presence hangs over every scene.
“Kiefer’s a scary guy,” Goldmann says admiringly. “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.”
“It’s great to watch his growth as an actor,” offers Canton, who first worked with the then-20-year-old Sutherland on the stylish 1987 horror comedy The Lost Boys and later on A Few Good Men. “He’s also a director and I think he brings that point of view into his scenes, so that he’s both inside and outside of the performance. He’s always perfecting. He’s really larger than life in the movie.”
Caruso cites a perfect example of the actor’s focus in a scene in which Sutherland was being pursued through a heavy crowd. “I was on a motorcycle holding a camera and so was the DP, grabbing as much as we could,” he recalls. “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.’ His expertise and skill as an actor is phenomenal.”
A true fan of the thriller genre, Sutherland approached his role with a mix of “calculation and ambiguity,” so as not to force assumptions about whether or not he is truly disconnected from reality or just a cold-blooded killer. “A lot of things that are done and said in the film are horribly misunderstood by the other characters because of the limited information they have,” he suggests. “It’s like a poker game.”
Representing the Montreal police in Taking Lives are three French actors of international renown: Tcheky Karyo stars as Surete du Quebec Director Hugo Leclair, who requests Agent Scott’s assistance on the case, while Olivier Martinez and Jean-Hugues Anglade star as SQ lead detectives Joseph Paquette and Emil Duval.
The SQ Director’s respect for Agent Scott’s help is offset by the chilly reception she gets from Paquette, played with bristling intensity by Martinez (Unfaithful, SWAT). Whether it’s personal, professional or just plain territorial, his hostility toward her is palpable. He finds her techniques theatrical and esoteric, preferring the practical experience gathered from years of walking a beat, chasing suspects, making arrests. To him it’s action, not theories, that gets the job done. “It’s all black and white with him,” says Caruso. “Rarely a gray area.”
“Paquette is deeply offended,” explains Martinez, “because he feels that by bringing her in, his boss is implying that he and his partner are too stupid to handle the job by themselves. To make matters worse, he’s bringing in an outsider not just from another department but from the FBI, and from another country. Finally, she’s a woman. All in all, he’s not very happy about any of it.”
Anglade, winner of a Cesar Award for his role in the period drama La Reina Margot, deftly diffuses some of the tension as Paquette’s easygoing partner Duval. Duval not only extends a welcome to Illeana herself but to her methods, for which he displays an honest interest and a natural talent. But his cordiality bears a price; the closer her gets to her the more he risks alienating Paquette, the one man to whom he trusts his life every single day.
“Duval is discreet and gentle, a very likeable man. He’s the kind you can trust,” says Anglade, who goes on to suggest that the two officers get along “more because Duval understands Paquette than the other way around. They complement each other, they work like brothers.”
Karyo, as the boss Leclair, extends the familial comparison by saying that his character views his subordinates “like young brothers. He understands the tension he has created but needs to disregard that in favor of what is best for the case.” As Caruso concurs, “He is their rock, the force that keeps these two guys working together and then with Agent Scott. As an SQ director, Leclair has the most at stake. The city of Montreal is panicked about the murders and they’re looking to his department for reassurance. He’s the character being pushed the hardest in the story and Tcheky expertly conveys that grace under pressure.”
Karyo, who spent time considering the life and work of criminal profilers in preparation for the film, proclaims the whole business “eerie.” Perhaps expressing what many of his colleagues are thinking, he says, somewhat incredulously, “Imagine a person living his life constantly focused on destroying other people’s lives. It’s difficult to comprehend. At the same time it’s also fascinating and eerie to imagine someone spending his or her whole life focused on trying to understand such people.”
Nearly as chilling a personality as the Taking Lives killer himself is that of his mother, Rebecca Asher – a performance requiring the kind of nuance and skill audiences have come to expect from two-time Oscar nominee Gena Rowlands, “a living legend,” as Caruso proclaims. In the opening moments of the film it is Rowlands as Mrs. Asher who sets the tone. While boarding a ferry she sees a passenger whom she later reports to police as her son Martin, a man presumed dead 19 years ago in a car accident. Striking a note both ominous and matter-of-fact, she tries to convince them of how dangerous he can be. “The police fail to take her seriously,” Rowland recalls, underscoring the scene’s subtle menace. “And then,” she says, pausing slyly, “it starts.”
“The way she took the darkness of her part and carried it underneath the sweet veneer, is truly amazing,” says Goldmann. “Mrs. Asher comes from a rarified world, a place in society that you wouldn’t expect would produce such a monster.”
For Martinez , who watched Rowlands’ movies while still an acting student in Paris , “seeing my name on the same call sheet with hers was utterly unbelievable. I’m such a fan.”
Martinez goes on to relate an unscripted moment in which Rowlands again proved her finesse. It was a scene being considered (and ultimately not used in the film) in which the detectives would escort Mrs. Asher to a hotel for her safety, and she would be carrying her lapdog. “I didn’t have much to do except walk behind her,” he says. “But suddenly she involved me by casually handing me the dog. I had to think that my character probably doesn’t like dogs and would be insulted by the gesture so that’s the way I reacted. In that moment, she gave me something to play. She took me completely by surprise but it worked.”
About The Production
Canton, whose tenure as head of production at Warner Bros. Pictures and chairman of the Columbia TriStar Motion Picture Companies involved him in features running the full range of genres, refers to Taking Lives as “a reality thriller” because of the production’s commitment to authenticity. Cast and crew worked closely with SQ Sgt. François Dore in Montreal for scenes involving the police officers and consulted with experienced profilers on the story’s larger thematic points.
Good-naturedly admitting he’s “more at ease with murderers, drug dealers and thieves than movie people,” Dore and his colleagues provided practical instruction on such specifics as “how to handle a gun, how to enter a room with a weapon poised, and how and where plainclothes detectives would likely wear a badge.” Additionally, the Montreal police department graciously provided uniforms and allowed its own SWAT and CSI officers to appear on camera as background players.
Principal players also met with two renowned professional profilers both prior to and during production to ensure that their characterizations rang true and the work was not misrepresented. One of these experts was Colonel Robert Ressler (Ret.), a former FBI profiler instrumental in establishing the groundbreaking Behavioral Sciences Unit at Quantico in the early 1970s, where profiling first developed as an investigative tool, and a pioneer in the practice of interviewing violent offenders in prison to establish a database of methods and motives. The author of several books, Ressler continues to consult privately on cases worldwide.
While he has yet to lie down in an open grave, Ressler doesn’t consider it outside the realm of possibility if that’s what it takes to “get into the mind of the killer” and emphasizes the importance of intense and purposeful evaluation of a crime scene as depicted by Jolie in the film. He recalls instances during his own career when he found it necessary to “visit the scene of a crime at 2 AM to see it exactly as the killer had seen it, 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.”
Ressler, who has lent his expertise to a number of prominent Hollywood productions, most notably Red Dragon, Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, spoke with screenwriter Jon Bokenkamp and the filmmakers while the script was still being developed and provided the production with information from his own experience. Although the film does not represent a specific case from his files, it incorporates a number of details from crimes he researched or investigated, such as the grisly and shocking way in which the killer dispatches a victim in an elevator in one of the film’s pivotal scenes.
“Bob’s insight was critical,” Bokenkamp acknowledges. “One day he sent me home with a stack of videotapes of interviews he had done with serial killers. It was incredibly disturbing. I never could have dreamed up half the things these guys actually did. What those interviews taught me is that you can’t get any stranger than real life.”
Forensic psychologist and criminal profiler Dr. Christine Kokonos met with Angelina Jolie and D.J. Caruso to discuss some realistic aspects of the profession – no holds barred. She laid out a series of genuine crime scene photos and, after instructing them in her methods of observation, encouraged them to speculate about the killer. In this way, Jolie got a sobering sense of what her character would be facing on a daily basis and the depth of analytical perspective she would bring to the job. “What do you see?” Kokonos asked. “Tell me who you think this person is or looks like based on what he has done?”
Kokonos then revealed the murderer’s photo and says that both Jolie and Caruso were astonished to discover he looked so ordinary. “It’s common,” she admits. “Given the heinous evidence they expected there would be something obviously odd about the killer’s face, something they would detect, that somehow he wouldn’t look normal. But when he looks just like anyone else, someone you might have a drink with or see at your kid’s soccer game, it’s shocking."
Reflecting on the nature and demands of the job, Jolie imagines how it might affect one’s personal life, remarking that “it’s easy to see how relationships would be difficult and how lonely such a person might be at times. It must be difficult to be the husband or wife of a profiler, to be aware of the heavy issues they’re dealing with. It’s not the kind of job that you leave at the office; you bring it home with you.”
Such an emotionally charged story, with a plot that can splinter into several different directions, requires a director who is both focused and flexible.
Goldmann, who sat in with the director on the casting process, says, “He’s not afraid to play with a scene. A lot of directors will have an actor come in and read a part and say, ‘OK, next.’ The great thing about D.J. is that after he listens to the reading he might say, ‘try it like this. What if this had happened to you, how would you play it?’ He’ll end up giving that person three or four shots. What’s interesting about that process is that, one, he’ll see how that actor takes direction; two, he may learn something about the role; and three, he gets to consider the dialogue with a different inflection. Ultimately, you’re not only evaluating an actor but you’re getting a deeper understanding for the possibilities of the scene.”
“A lot of the shots are interconnected,” notes Sutherland, who directed the action comedy Truth or Consequences, NM. “He uses beautiful moving shots where you’ll be following one character and you’ll end on another and then pick up on someone else.”
“Clearly he’s an actors’ director,” adds mystery fan Rowlands, who speaks from the perspective of a multiple-award-winning career in film and television spanning nearly 50 years. “He loves his actors. He’s very encouraging and a positive force on the set, which I believe is the greatest portion of a director’s function.”
“Every day has its challenges,” Caruso admits. “For me, the most difficult part is trying to capture in cinematic ways the emotional experiences of all the characters, to be true to the story but at the same time not step on the natural, organic moments that an actor might suddenly cast into the mix.
“Ultimately,” he circles back to the heart of the matter, “it’s about the characters. You can stage the most beautiful shot in the world and it can be a dead moment on film. Taking Lives focuses on the interior landscape, what these people mean to one another.”
Proving Canton ’s contention that “filmmaking is the ultimate team sport,” Taking Lives re-unites the director with two-time Independent Spirit Award nominee Amir Mokri, his cinematographer on The Salton Sea, and veteran production designer Tom Southwell, with whom he collaborated on The Salton Sea and the 1998 television suspense drama Black Cat Run. Joining them is acclaimed editor Anne V. Coates, whose work on the David Lean masterpiece Lawrence of Arabia earned her an Academy Award and whose most recent project, Unfaithful, introduced her to Olivier Martinez. Composer Philip Glass, recently nominated for an Oscar for The Hours, provides the atmospheric score.
In an instant, the dramatic tension of Taking Lives shifts from the internal, intellectual landscape to a public scale as the sky and highways break wide open for a frantic climactic chase covering a space of ten city blocks. The killer is finally out in the open, with Agent Scott in pursuit and the police just a breath behind her. Weaving in and out of rush hour traffic, he remains just out of her reach but never out of sight. Meanwhile, a police helicopter looms into view.
To stage the tumultuous sequence the filmmakers hired 2nd Unit Director Mic Rodgers, a renowned stuntman and stunt coordinator with decades of experience and the co-creator (with Matt Sweeney) of the “Mic Rig,” a device that won the 2001 Technical Achievement Academy Award. First implemented in the notorious action hit The Fast and the Furious, it later helped capture the explosive freeway footage in The Matrix Reloaded.
“The Mic Rig is a way to dispense with slow towing shots and safely put lead actors into the middle of the action,” Rodgers explains. The hero car, with the actors inside, is mounted near the back wheels of an elongated van chassis piloted by a stuntman, and takes off at speeds of 60 and 70 mph. The rig can move in all directions, spin or rear up on two wheels if required, aided by small jets that shoot oil or water onto the wheels. Consequently, the wind whipping back the actors’ hair and the scenery zipping past is real, rather than post-production and green screen effects.
The shoot’s principal challenge was in navigating the narrow passage of the Quebec Bridge (in Quebec City , doubling here for Montreal ). “There are a couple of near head-on collisions in the scene plus a couple of actual crashes, with everything moving at high speed, and I needed to fit a camera vehicle into the middle of it,” Rodgers outlines. Ever the innovator, he employed a new stunt vehicle he calls the Black Box. “It’s basically a van with exterior camera mounts and an interior roll cage, race seats and harnesses, which allows the camera operators and focus pullers to be inside and protected instead of exposed to danger on the outside, which is the traditional way.” The Black Box, driven by a stuntman, is more maneuverable and capable of higher speeds than a standard camera car.
Rodgers notes that the production relied upon “real cars,” a Mustang and a Caprice, and a realistic traffic scenario “rather than ridiculously expensive picture vehicles or preposterous situations. We tried to keep it looking like real speed and real danger.”
Once again, the Quebec Provincial Police provided assistance – this time in the form of a fully functional Bell 206 helicopter, one of the department’s arsenal of air power, which they lent to the production for this scene.
Filming Locations
In addition to the invaluable help the film crew received from the Surete, they enjoyed a general warm reception from Montreal and Quebec City , which provided the perfect settings for their story, which is set in Montreal . Working from an early script that placed the action in Vancouver, D.J. Caruso decided while location scouting to move the focus to the predominantly French-speaking cities in favor of their “European feel.”
As a bonus, this allowed the production to incorporate shots of the renowned Montreal International Jazz Festival, complete with fireworks, into a vital pursuit sequence, giving the action a more urgent, surreal tone. Caruso, who compares the festival atmosphere to Mardi Gras, recalls how the camera crew made the most of the opportunity, “running and gunning, with extras mixed into the crowd. It was fantastic, the energy of the real event was beyond anything we could have manufactured; you could almost point your camera in any direction, the scope and scale of it was overwhelming.”
Quebec ’s blend of the familiar with the foreign, especially for American audiences, serves as an unsettling reminder, notes Canton , “that this story could be taking place anywhere in the world. It could be your hometown.”
The setting also amplifies Agent Scott’s isolation. “By placing the American FBI agent into a predominantly French-speaking city with a distinctive European look, it illustrates her separateness,” Caruso explains. “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,” an element that helps in some way to explain the choices she makes later.
Finally, the beauty of these Canadian locales, captured by cinematographer Amir Mokri, provides stark contrast to the ugliness of the crimes being committed: a meandering bike path alongside a lush forest is marred by the discovery of a makeshift grave, an elegant art gallery reception is marred by gunfire and destruction.
“By choosing to showcase Montreal ,” Canton concludes, “we were lucky to get locations that are unique and have a real sense of style.”
 Production notes provided by Warner Bros. Pictures. |
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Taking Lives
