Taking Lives is doing just that: sucking the life out of moviegoers an hour and 43 minutes at a time.

Wait, I can trim that back a bit. A measly two of these minutes are allotted to the delightfully gratuitous sex scene (the MPAA rating of "Some Sexuality" is misleading) between Angelina Jolie and Ethan Hawke.

And the very next minute has the best pun ever: the acrobatics of the previous encounter require Hawke to have a cut in his arm re-stitched, while the doctor deadpans, "You must have opened up last night."

The rest is over an hour and a half that could have been spent watching basketball highlights, even if my bracket is in shambles.

Believe me, the Kentucky upset was far more thrilling. Taking Lives goes for the cheap scares of a latter-day Wes Craven movie.

The "big twist" in the film is just as predictable, and you can spot it the instant (insert actor's name) first appears onscreen, though I have to admit there's a secondary twist right at the end that is quite surprising, though ultimately still laughable.

Otherwise, it's standard movie-making procedure. Jolie's performance is the Hollywood formula for a FBI agent (except for the sex scene) that made soul mates of Ashley Judd and author James Patterson in other movies. Thankfully, we're spared a standard "how I became a cop" back story. And it only takes her French-Canadian colleagues a few scenes to pull the ol' oops-we-didn't-realize-she-can-understand-our-language blunder. Zut alors!

Please, don't see Taking Lives. You may just end up taking your own.

-- Reviewed by David Tatasciore