Starring Angelina Jolie, Ethan Hawke, Kiefer Sutherland, and Gena Rowlands. Rating unavailable.

Taking Lives , purported to be a dramatic thriller about a female FBI agent tracking a serial killer, is more G-spot than G-man. It's unfortunate. There's not an acceptable reason why a movie about a brainy woman tracking a monster cannot be mentally stimulating to both sexes without repeatedly reminding us of the star's physical appeal. Think Silence of the Lambs or the first Prime Suspect TV series: suspenseful dramas in which Jodie Foster and Helen Mirren, respectively, resisted unbuttoning their blouses. But in Taking Lives , director D. J. Caruso ( Salton Sea ) appears to have so little faith in his audience that he can't give bathtub scenes and exposed nipples a miss. It's an insult not only to discerning moviegoers but to Angelina Jolie, an Oscar-winning actor who used to eschew such on-screen inanity.

More importantly, the dis to our national pride also rankles. The very notion of Jolie playing an eccentric, young FBI agent summoned north to rescue ineffectual Montreal police veterans who've yet to crack a decades-old serial-killer case chafes. Sure, it's a pleasure to witness a Canadian city portraying itself in a runaway production. And hey, there's homeboy Kiefer Sutherland stalking an effete painter played by Ethan Hawke. But the film's here-comes-the-American-to-save-the-jour concept, and the unrelenting dimwittedness of the French-Canadian police, is farfetched.

Fortunately, the audience is not alone in its torment. Jolie's presence also gets up the nose of the intense Oliver Martinez as a local detective who resents her smirking, flaky intrusion into his department. Initially, we're excited by the palpable chemistry between Martinez and Jolie, and when he's off-screen, we ache for the impassioned Unfaithful actor and his English subtitles to contribute additional soulful oomph. Alas, his role is minimal, with most exchanges occurring between Jolie and the familiarly bland Hawke. Befitting the subject matter, however, the twosome's combined pulse rate suggests the onset of rigor mortis.

It could have been better. Caruso initially rivets with a languidly paced opening sequence in which we get to meet the killer as a youthful oddball. And although they smack of artsy-fartsiness, the director's extreme close-ups of rouged, talking lips and empty martini glasses build a pleasingly creepy sense of unease. Again, though, as if he didn't trust that these compelling touches would keep viewers awake, Caruso then hauls out a discordant onslaught of hackneyed Hollywood pyrotechnics and screeching car chases. At the very least, it might serve to distract some from guessing the killer's identity. Unfortunately, Taking Lives metamorphoses from a whodunit to an of-course-he-did-it early in.