Your name… credit cards… life. It’s the ultimate identity theft. An elusive serial killer has for 20 years assumed his victims’ identities. But now there’s a breakthrough and FBI agent Illeana Scott (Jolie) is assigned to the case. It’s Scott’s job to know what makes a killer tick, but somehow this killer knows even more about Scott.

Taking Lives desperately wants to be Se7en. The similarities are too bold to be ignored. One look at the opening credit sequence should put all doubts to rest. While it tries to create the atmosphere of The Silence of the Lambs and Se7en, what we end up with is closer to Blood Work, Kiss the Girls, or the plethora of serial killer thrillers that have come out since. The cinematography by Amir Mokri is excellent, and the filmmakers do create a palpable atmosphere, but like all those pop bands that tried to imitate The Beatles, what they capture is all of the surface and none of the soul.

The film goes in circles. Scenes do not build to other scenes, and the ending can be seen well ahead of time. There is a feeling that the film was being rewritten as they went along, and the twists become less and less convincing. Kiefer Sutherland does well with what he is given, but he is wasted in a role that comprises barely five minutes of screen time. The rest of the actors seem to be going through the motions. DJ Caruso, whose resume consists of a good deal of television work, last directed the drug thriller, The Salton Sea, so he obviously knows his way around the cinema’s darker corners, but there is nothing here. The second half of the film does not follow through on the promise of the first. The ideas seem culled from other movies, so there is no freshness to the work, and by the time the denouement rolls around, it seems to be belaboring the obvious, and we just want it to be over.

The worst thing one can say about a film is that it’s nothing more than recycled scenes that we have seen over and over. Sadly, Taking Lives is loaded with these moments, from the predictable way clues are revealed, to the pointless sex scene late in the film. This familiarity takes all the intrigue out of the picture, and in the end we are left with a jumble of scenes that we have seen and seen and seen, and that we will probably see and see again.

This is the fullscreen version, so the quality is automatically bad. With photography as good as this, it is a shame to see it cropped. Warner Home Video will be releasing a widescreen director’s cut on the same day, so that would be the one to buy.

Taking Lives offers both English and French tracks, both in 5.1 Dolby Surround. The sound is sharp, and everything from the quite of a basement search to gun shots and explosions comes through crisply with good dispersal.

Theatrical trailer: Save this for after the film, if you have not seen it, because it gives away a few things.

Gag reel: This is strange. Somehow “gag reel” and “serial killer movie” just don’t seem like they go together. And it is odd to see one of the actors start talking about how someone was brutally murdered, only to break into laughter, all of which is set to kooky music. At the same time, it is nice to see that they were all having fun with such dark material.

In the Crime Lab section of the special features menu, there are four making-of featurettes, each running about five minutes.

The Art of Collaboration: The cast and crew talk about how the project came together.

Profiling a Director: A look at Caruso’s process and how he goes about putting a film together.

Bodies of Evidence: A look at how the actors interpreted roles that are different than what they usually play.

Puzzle Within the Puzzle: A look at the editing of the film and the collaboration between Caruso and editor Anne V. Coates.