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Taking Lives | 141340__takingl_l
HAWKE AND JOLIE
Taking Lives: Takashi Seida

When Warner offered ''Taking Lives'' to D.J. Caruso (''The Salton Sea''), the director had his doubts about the movie, in which a Canadian police officer (Olivier Martinez) teams up with an FBI profiler (Angelina Jolie) to catch a serial killer. ''I said it depends on the female lead,'' Caruso remembers. ''No offense, but there were movie stars who weren't right for it. It's hard to buy some of these women playing tough FBI agents or cops. When they said Angelina, I said terrific.'' Caruso and his star fine-tuned Jon Bokenkamp's script (six writers had already worked on the project) to make the story darker and more realistic, and Ethan Hawke and Kiefer Sutherland subsequently joined the $43 million film to play a murder witness and a deadly fugitive, respectively. ''Kiefer is creepy on screen,'' says Caruso. ''You just close your eyes and listen to him talk, and you realize he's got the coolest voice. You don't get that staying home and going to church every Sunday.'' (We know -- we saw ''Phone Booth.'')


Posted Feb 13, 2004 | Published in issue #752 | Order Article Reprints