Dir. John Luessenhop
Reviewed by Matt Adcock
“We're takers, gents. That's what we do for a living. We take. “
It seems as society breaks down, people will look for ways to ‘take’ from the system, to get rich quick and walk away to live the dream… Takers is a film that follows a quality ensemble cast doing their action movie / heist-em-up thing. Matt Dillion stars as Jack Welles, a do right cop on the trail of a slick bunch of robbers – he’s on a mission to take them down and is closing in despite his partner Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez) having some major issues.
The bad guys, well, I say bad guys but the robbers here are actually a mixture of criminals – some a lot worse than others - who range from the ‘nice guy’ Gordon Jennings (Idris ‘The Losers’ Elba) through to loose cannon ‘nasty guy’ Ghost (Tip T.I. Harris) who has just been released from prison.
If this feels a little familiar – chances are that you might have seen (or read my review of) The Town which opened in the UK last week. The two films share a lot of common ground, the bad news for Takers though is that where The Town delivered a massively engaging experience – punctuated with stunning shootouts and a real sense of danger, Takers stumbles around trying to make you care for a wealth of bit part characters and succeeds only in making you wish you were watching The Town again.
"I think we're 'takers-ing' the piss out of the audience!"
Think elements of the crime classic Heat crossed with an FHM men’s lifestyle feature entitled ‘Crime does pay’ as the robbers who also include John Rahway (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse Attica (Chris Brown) revel in the proceeds of another successfully heist and get ready to disappear for a year off to enjoy their lives of luxury. Things go awry when Ghost turns up with a possible easy $12 million hit from an armored car. The only problem is that some very nasty Russian hoods also have designs on the same target…
You can probably imagine the rest as the crew fall out, the ‘easy’ job goes fatally wrong and the cops close in. It all sounds pretty exciting and to be fair there is an ok shoot-out towards the end but because director Luessenhop has fudged all the character development you never really know who to root for / or care who makes it to the end credits. For cinematic crime thrills in 2010 – you should certainly visit The Town before taking a trip to see Takers.
UNSEEN DELETED SCENE:
The crew from The Town are challenged to a 'heist-off' by the 'Takers' see review next week...
Darkmatters rating: ööööö (5 stiff lifestyle montages out of 10)
Darkmatters quick reference guide: Action 7 / Style 6 / Babes 6 / Comedy 5 / Horror 3 / Spiritual Enlightenment 2
Things that made me happier than watching Takers this week:
1. Seeing Hayden Panettiere in I Love You Beth Cooper...
2. Beating Mafia II on 'hard' on the PS3...
3. Getting my film reviews added to The Hemel Hempstead Gazette...
"Front page billing... on the Hemel Express too"
