We start off in 1963 with a young Martin Asher (Dano) murdering a fellow young traveler (Justin Chatwin) and taking his identity. Fast forward to "now", and FBI Agent Illeana Scott (Jolie) is brought in to Montreal to help find a serial killer who...you know, I just realized that I'm not sure what the inciting incident for her being brought in was? Like, they find a body with a smashed-in face and no hands, and the opening montage goes through a lot of little images of death reports talking about how bodies are unidentifiable (that sequence is just one of several ways this movie wants to be Se7en), but if the idea is that this guy is taking people's identities and they know that, then why is it presented as a revelation later? I dunno, the dialog was hard to parse at times.
Anyway, she's brought in because she's good at detective-ing, and has some kind of prior relationship with the Inspector in charge (Karo). She gets partnered up with genuinely nice fellow Sgt. Duval (Anglade) and utter dick and lawsuit waiting to happen Sgt. Paquette (Martinez) (so take a wild guess which one doesn't survive the movie) and they go looking for the killer. They find a witness to the latest killing, an art dealer named James Costa (Hawke), who draws the suspect for them. They investigate, identify him as Martin Asher, talk to Asher's mother (Rowlands) who confirms that her son is banana-pants and violent, "Asher" (Sutherland) finds Costa and shoots Duval, car chase, car-splosion, "Asher" is dead, Costa and Scott spend a nekkid night together. (I have the director's cut, which is evidently much more nekkid.)
Next morning, when Asher's mother is brought in to identify the body, she can't, and suddenly it all falls into place - Costa is Asher, and he hammers that point home by decapitating his mother in an elevator (again, that's different in the theatrical cut, but I admire the focus). He escapes, Scott is fired because she banged a witness who turned out to be a cop-killer, and the movies ends...
No, hang on, it goes on another 20 minutes, showing her in a farmhouse on the outskirts of Carlisle, PA, which, as a point of interest, is where some of my family is from. Anyway, she's heavily pregnant (side note: there's a taunting phone call between Asher and Scott before this where he makes a point of saying that he came inside her, and I thought, wow, that's kind of a crude detail to include, but then she turns up pregnant and I thought, wow, that was a fucking crude and uncessary detail to include), living on her own, but then Costa shows up and nearly kills her and stabs her in the pregnancy with a pair of scissors but psyche it's a prosthetic, and she kills him, all is well.
So, this is by no means a good movie, but I don't think it deserves its 22% on Rotten Tomatoes, nor did Angelina Jolie deserve a fucking Razzie nomination for it (she lost to Halle Berry for Catwoman; I have no idea if Toasty is just going down the lists of Razzie noms to buy these movies). It's heavily influenced by Se7en, Basic Instinct, and Silence of the Lambs (and, in turn, Copycat), which is funny because all of those films were 90s and this is 2004, but then again, the novel this was loosely based on was published in 1999. I happen to like those 90s erotic/psychological/serial killer thrillers, so that's not a bad thing for me. I also Jolie and Hawke were the highlights of the movie, and I have no idea if Jolie intended for Scott to read as mildly autistic but she totally does.
The movie's problems are all directorial. The pacing is weird, it ends a few different times, it overplays its hand when Costa guns Asher down after the car crash (I mean, he's already down, he's clearly just delivering a coupe de grace, and up until then I'd been on the fence as to whether Costa was the bad guy, but that sealed it), and there's a scene early in the movie where Mrs. Asher reports her son alive that just didn't need to be there and it throws everything off. We could have excised Paquette from the movie entirely and not lost anything, and Kiefer Sutherland should have been given more to do.
With all of that said, it's not a bad time if you like this kind of movie, and if I get a hankering to watch such a film but I don't feel like watching one of the better ones, I might throw this on again.
My Grade: C
Rewatch Value: Medium
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Thief, unless of course tomorrow brings some new fresh horror
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