With the new serial-killer thriller "Taking Lives," star Angelina Jolie wanted to make sure the box office wouldn't be taking your hard-earned money without something in return.

That's because apart from being an actress, she's a movie fan, too. And the last thing she wants is for moviegoers to walk out of out "Taking Lives," thinking they've watched just another run-of-the-mill thriller.

"I think audiences tire of the predictable ones -- I do," Jolie told me in an @ The Movies interview this week. "Audiences are getting smarter. Our movie couldn't be just another attempt to lean on the genre with the assumption that it would work."

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Jolie plays Special Agent Illeana Scott, a top FBI profiler who is called to Montreal to help French-Canadian authorities unravel the identity of a serial killer who's dispatching his victims in a particularly brutal manner.

Using unorthodox methods of investigation, Scott concludes the perpetrator she's tracking is a "life-jacker" -- a person who studies his potential victim, kills him and assumes his identity until he moves onto the next one. But when she becomes too personally involved in the case, her intuition becomes clouded and it begins to jeopardize the case.

Naturally, when a new film like "Taking Lives" is released, it's easy for audiences and critics to automatically draw comparisons to such contemporary classics like "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Seven." And while those comparisons are complimentary in one sense, it's obviously not a good idea for a movie that wants to stand apart in the genre to imitate what's been done before.

To ensure some different spins creatively, Jolie, director D.J. Caruso and co-stars Ethan Hawke and Kiefer Sutherland dove headlong into research, took classes and studied with FBI personnel -- all with the idea of coming up with a novel approach to compliment the Michael Pye novel upon which the film was based. In the end, "Taking Lives" isn't so much about who did the crime, but why.

"We didn't approach the film as a horror film or nor did we try to do movie about a serial killer," Jolie explained. "We all read a great script on a really interesting book that had an opportunity to show great characters, great relationships and a real study into human behavior. It examines people, how they change, how it affects you as an adult and whom you can trust. It was wonderful that the story happened to be a thriller."

While Jolie assures that the film has its fair share of scares and surprises, it wasn't done in such a way to compromise the integrity of the characters. In short, the film is true to the details in establishing the validity of actions being played out on screen, she said.

"We wanted to make sure you could get to know these characters as people and that you were invested in each individual," Jolie said. "Then, at the end, we made every single piece fall into place. A lot of times it frustrates me that it's a surprise ending, but I don't understand how it happened."

For "Taking Lives," the "how" actually extends back to the killer's childhood, a bond not uncommon in case studies of serial killers, Jolie said.

"We really analyzed why serial killers become these kinds of people," Jolie explained. "Ethan, D.J., Kiefer and I did a lot of research, from brain patterns to new scientific developments to old case studies on how these people related to each other as children. Between all these people, as children there was a through-line of abuse and neglect. We found out what they hate about society or what they feel inferior about by the way they kill people -- you could see it."

But as tragic as the pasts of these killers were, Jolie said the baggage should never be used as reason for people to kill.

"There is no excuse for killers to say, 'I had a bad childhood' -- because many, many people have -- and they don't kill people," Jolie wryly observed. "There should not be this attitude that says, 'I was abused so I'm allowed to be this violent.'"

The Parental Perspective
Jolie's been constantly working since she won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 1999's "Girl, Interrupted."

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Despite the heavy workload ("Taking Lives" is one of five films on her plate this year), she's devoted the greatest amount of time in the past three years to her son Maddox, whom she adopted from Cambodia. The 28-year-old actress said Maddox has helped give her a whole new perspective on her career as an actress.

"Children help you find yourself and remember yourself. They help you remember why you're doing what you do," Jolie explained. "With them, you approach things better, clearer and with more ease, because they're not as important as your children. I'm not overwhelmed easily anymore. As long as my kid is healthy, nothing really can shake me."

That's not to say Jolie spurns acting. In fact, she clearly loves it more than ever and realizes her high-profile career is beneficial to her off-screen role as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador.

"I've always lived my life to be an actress and for a few years it was my outlet and what I cared most about -- I lived through my characters," Jolie told me. "But now, it's the last thing that's important. But I enjoy it and appreciate it and am able to do good things because of it because it's financially beneficial. I'm able to build a lot of things and do a lot of good with it. It's given me a focus on how it can all be for a good reason."

In the end, the "Taking Lives" star is most happy with taking the path of spreading goodwill, because it's given her a voice.

"It can be very strange -- you can have a public persona but have nothing to say," Jolie said. "But when you start to get involved in things you care about, you realize you have a voice. It can do some good." More Interviews With Tim Lammers @ The Movies:

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