YMMV / Taking Lives

• Captain Obvious Reveal: It's pretty blatant that Costa is actually Martin Asher. Most of their encounters are kept offscreen and are only described by Costa after the fact, leaving plenty of room for him to be an Unreliable Narrator.
• Complete Monster: Martin Asher, aka James Costa, is a drifter Serial Killer who travels around the country to kill people who physically resemble him. Then he assumes their identities to continue his murder spree elsewhere. He's been doing this for at least two decades before the police pick up on his trail again. He murders his own mother by sawing off her head for giving the cops information on him. Using his fake persona, he starts an affair with the detective investigating his case, impregnating her with twin boys in the process, or so he thinks. When she later refuses him, he stabs her in her belly with a pair of scissors.
• Ho Yay: The movie opens with a bit of this. And there's a lot of it between Sutherland and Hawke. What is he talking about?
• Moral Event Horizon: Asher crosses it in the opening scene, where he brutally murders a teenage runaway who had kindly taken him in so he could fake his own death and take over his identity.
• Questionable Casting: For whatever reason, the production chose to cast French actors as the Quebecois police detectives, none of whom make any attempt to emulate the (very distinctive) French-Canadian dialect. Possibly a case of Viewers Are Morons.
• Retroactive Recognition: Paul Dano plays the young Martin Asher in the opening.

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