Takers, John Luessenhop’s first attempt at a big-budget movie, falls flat on its face before it ever gets going. Takers is an entirely unoriginal, formulaic, good guys versus bad guys movie. It’s one of those movies where the trailer tells a better story than the actual film. With a cast that includes Matt Dillon (There’s Something About Mary, Wild Things), Idris Elba (HBO’s The Wire, Obsessed), Paul Walker (Joy Ride, Running Scared), T.I. (American Gangster, ATL), Hayden Christensen (Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Jumper), and Jay Hernandez (Friday Night Lights, Hostel), among others, I thought that at least I’d be entertained with the acting. Heck, the R&B singer Chris Brown was even in this movie.
In all honesty, there were too many well-known actors in the movie. They all became jumbled, and I needed help keeping track of who I was supposed to care about and who I wasn’t. Some of the good guys showed purposeful errors of judgment, while some of the bad guys weren’t as bad as some of the other bad guys. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t paying attention or didn’t care about any of these characters.
When the film opens, we meet the crew of bad guys that consists of a small group of friends who, once a year, do a multi-million dollar robbery. Their heists are planned to perfection, never leaving behind even a hint of who they are. The current job is a bank robbery that goes down successfully in the film’s opening scene. They divide up the $2 million pot evenly. While the takers are content with sitting back and relaxing for a year with their newly found cash, one member of the group wants more and wants to do it immediately.
What is more important is that T.I.’s character (Ghost) was caught in a job gone bad five or so years before this bank robbery. He didn’t rat out any of his crew, and now that he’s out, he wants to make up for the lost time and cash out with one final score. This involves the heisting of two armored cars. The estimated score would be more than $25 million. While the other characters don’t want to do this, they agree, feeling they owe Ghost.
Each character has a unique specialty. For lack of want and because the characters are so vanilla, it’s pathetic; I’m going to use the actors’ names rather than the names of their characters. Elba is the leader of the group. He has the final say in everything, while Walker handles the firearms. Christensen is in charge of planning and discharging the explosives. Others have their specialty, but that’s not super important. What is important is the one police officer (Dillon) and, to a lesser extent, his partner (Hernandez) are slowly picking up clues about the forthcoming crime. The question becomes, will they figure out everything they need to know in time to stop the heist from happening? This is the premise for the entire movie. You’d be right if you think you’ve seen this movie a hundred times before. You have. This film only offers things that you have seen before.
Takers steals all of its action sequences from a variety of different movies. Most notable is the shoot ’em up scene that was straight out of the movie True Romance. While this ending scene in True Romance is classic, Takers uses the same sequence and makes it laughable. Perhaps it is because you’ll already be laughing at how serious this movie is trying to take itself and how poor of a job it is at doing that. Or perhaps it’s because you care far less about any of these characters than you do the lovable Clarence (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) from True Romance. As a side note, if you have yet to see True Romance, plan to do so. It is wildly entertaining, and Christian Slater and Patricia Arquette dish out the best performances of their careers. I genuinely wish I had watched True Romance for the umpteenth time instead of watching Takers.
Plot 5/10
Character Development 1/10
Character Chemistry 4/10
Acting 2/10
Screenplay 2/10
Directing 2/10
Cinematography 2/10
Sound 2/10
Hook and Reel 6/10
Universal Relevance 1/10
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