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.”
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