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.