Film Reviews

Takers

• Rating:
• Director: John Luessenhop
• Starring: Paul Walker, Chris Brown, Hayden Christiensen, Zoe Saldana, Matt Dillon, Idris Elba, T.I.
• Details: US/107mins 12A

Assembling a team of pretty young things, and casting a famous rapper as the villain, Takers so desperately wants to be "Heat for the Facebook generation" you can almost smell it. One of the many problems with Luessenhop's film is it never once pays homage to Michael Mann's crime classic, and instead rips it off at every available opportunity. While Matt Dillon is a fine actor with the right material, and Idris Elba a star in waiting, everyone else might as well be a mannequin with batteries. Paul Walker and Zoe Saldana are just two recognisable faces in utterly pointless roles. Five mates (Elba, Walker, Christiensen, Brown and Ealy) live the good life courtesy of the ill-gotten gains that come from robbing banks blind. They only do one job a year, plan it to perfection, giving ten percent to charity and then living off the rest of the profits until the next heist. But when former cohort, Ghost (played with slithery but grating menace by T.I.), gets out of the joint and looks for his cut from a previous job where he was left for dead, the foundations of the group are shook. Offering the gang first refusal on a major gig he heard about inside, the rewards this time out are plentiful, but the risks considerably higher. A light and breezy tone more reminiscent of The Italian Job, or Fast and the Furious would've made a lot more sense than the earnest atmosphere that was never going to suit the majority of the cast. Walker still fills out a suit fine enough, but has absolutely nothing to do, and barely any dialogue; in his defence at least he knows how to hold a gun - Matt Dillon looks like someone constantly about to trip over his firearm, not a veteran detective. The script does at least attempt to give the cops some substance, taking a brief look at their home life, although barely offering enough penetration to crack the surface of it. As proceedings move towards an explosive conclusion, Luessenhop ups the ponderous visuals and music, but forgets too many of his bored looking ensemble. While it could be argued that Heat did something similar, that film played all of the other elements of the cat and mouse game perfectly, and its attention to detail was staggering. Takers is just plain sloppy, and aims for unobtainable dramatic heights when it never had the talent or the script to get there in the first place. There is a cracking heist film called The Town out now. Do yourself a favour and go and see that instead of this uninspired, derivative rubbish.

Review by Mike Sheridan