Takers review

Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery and that's really what "Takers" feels like. Not so much a rip-off because many of the things done in 'Takers' have become somewhat staples in the heist movie genre. You know there's a twist somewhere abouts, you know things never quite go to plan and you generally know what happens to any pursuing the gang of thieves.

The issue that ultimately brings the whole movie down is that fact that it becomes a pretty well traveled film. At least within the first twenty to forty minutes you had enough to think that it was leading somewhere new, but after that it simply makes pulls from 'The Italian Job" (which is basically how they performed their heist) as well as Michael Mann films. I'm not knocking the fact that they wanna be like Mike as I am quite a fan, however they don't have nearly enough going on under the hood to make it come to together. Aesthetically however they kind of have it down shooting in his digital style and lighting the entire movie as handsomely as possible. So basically it's Michael Mann without the brains, brawn or grit.

The plot is simple as pie. The band of always nicely dressed thieves (Idris Elba, Paul Walker, Michael Ealy, Chris Brown and Hayden Christensen) pull off a daring bank heist to kick off the film and let us know that they mean business by slowly walking away from the helicopter they stole and blew up. I admit the preceding sequence although ridiculous was still somewhat impressive. Then a former member of the gang, Ghost (T.I.) gets out of jail and tells them he has a plan for hardcore armored car heist in five days. Now already these guys claim to be smart and claim that Ghost isn't yet they take the rushed job anyway and away we go with planning sequences and so on and so fourth. Now something that makes a strong heist movie (and actually a good movie in general) is when you're characters having something going on. 'Takers' almost gets this concept right except for the fact that some of the more interesting characters have nothing to do. Idris Elba gets a lengthy side plot involving his drug addicted sister which is pretty interesting although sometimes ill-timed to be placed into the story, but that's it. Michael Ealy seemed pretty damn intense in the beginning scenes and then gets nothing to do till the hotel shootout. Paul Walker just walks through the movie doing things and yet we know next to nothing about him or his personality. And the list goes on.

There is the side story with the cops on their tail too. Matt Dillion and Jay Hernandez play the partners that are getting close to figuring out how it all might tie together maybe. There lays the problem with their story, they're always like five steps behind so it never feel like... oh shit they're on their tail! It's more like they have enough personal issues that they'll probably forget about the case and go home to be with their troubled kids. And yet with all these plot and character flaws the film still finds a way to ALMOST work. It does so by A: shooting the entire movie like a GQ photo shoot B: casting mostly well (T.I. who also produced the film, not too great an actor) C: got creative with the action sequences. Strangely those three things really do work to smooth out some of the other issues a bit.

The hotel shoot out is done almost completely in slow mo and rather clean as it's PG-13. But their against the grain music choice, set design and edits make it work pretty well. It's not outstanding, but it looks nice and feels rough and fast. Chris Brown's parkour sequence; mostly shot well, somewhat funny when he body checks a woman into a wall, works out well enough. Some of the ending pieces are also skillfully shot and tend to impress, but upon it's airport finale which you knew was going to happen a long, long time ago you just sort of feel 'meh' about it all.

Armored review

I feel like there's a cut of "Armored" that really nails it. I mean hits the exact right notes. The film isn't bad, it's just too much of a mixed bag to fully like. Here's my case... director Nimrod Antal (who recently a nice new job directing "Predators" for Robert Rodriguez and FOX) has a great eye for styles and and even better ability of how to use them without making an exploitation flick. "Armored" is 90's caper film, with the darkened style of 70's John Carpenter action. I say 90's caper because now almost all caper films are formed off of the "Ocean's 11" format so they attempt to be as super cool. In the 90's you had things like this. Little action, lots of talk and often sequences that were good, but then were followed by one's that weren't balanced.

Screen Gems' child Columbus Short ("Quarantine" and "This Christmas") is the green lead as Ty Hackett, a former Iraq solider that came home after his parent death. He now takes care of his troubled teenage brother and works at the same security job as his father. Matt Dillon is Mike, Ty's godfather and co-worker. Mike is shady, but in his own way means well. He cares about Ty, but he has other plans... like the robbery. The rest of the team is equally filled out with 90's era badasses. Which for me was geekily cool, not unlike the three heads of the police squad in "Planet Terror". Laurence Fishburne is the crude and ill-mannered Baines, Jean 'The Professional' Reno is Quinn, Skeet Ulrich is almost unrecognizable as the grungy Dobbs and yeah for fun why not had Fred Ward as their chief. The crew dynamic is good and their conversations, though slanted towards a certain mindset, do serve the picture well.

Here's where I do start to wonder things though. As the robbery begins it seemed that certain pieces weren't edited right. Like it had been cut up too much and was making some bits tough to follow. Other times you get the drift, but some characters action might take them from zero to sixty in a second without much mid time for us to notice. And then the music. Of all the composer I'm shocked to learn that John Murphy, someone whose music I've always gone ga-ga over, made this over roasted hollywood generalized junk. And I say this because there's times where the music fucks the scene up. The MUSIC for crying out loud! But hey I'm not a hard person to please. Thus the mixed bag situation... there is some good.

Antal likes to leave characters roaming and show us that. Show us some downtime or leave a scene going a little longer. At times this makes for great suspense. In fact there is a really well done scene involved Skeet Ulrich trying to help Short's character by getting some engine parts for him. Also the little action in the film is pretty damn good. I enjoyed the lumbering armored truck chase and I have to say the ending crash was pretty nice looking. Also there are some surprisingly R-rated gun shots in the film as well. Which leads me to wonder did the films rating get bumped down when it got moved from a summer release to a winter release. Along with that is this brisk 88 minute film the actual whole product or simply something before we get an unrated director's cut? I actually hope so. I hope so because this is the kind of picture that I call a popcorn film and I wish I could say this one really is, but it's not fluid enough. And it's not quite fun enough.

I love this crew. Fishburne is an asshole, Quinn is the quiet, smart man and Dillon is the head badass. If there's nothing else going on, they just point the camera at him and you get the great concern looks from him. It's formulaic at times, but not gimmicky and it adds up. In fact I'm surprised I've liked it as much as I have, but really there needs to be a longer cut that would make the film work and some different music.

"Armored" ** 1/2 out of ****