Movie Reviews

"Takers" is what you get when someone tries to make a Michael Mann movie, but they have no idea what it is that makes Michael Mann movies so good.

This movie wants so badly to be on the level of Mann's "Heat." How badly? So much so that it pulls character beats and set pieces (and even a few dialogue bits) straight from Mann's masterpiece. An (all-egedly) tight-knit crew who take down high-profile scores together? Check. An obsessed cop who has a crumbling marriage and strained relationship with his daughter because he's married to his work? A renegade member of the crew who just got out of prison? Check. A risky heist that would net enough money for each criminal to permanently exit the game? Check. A final standoff set at the airport? Check.

Those elements certainly weren't pioneered in "Heat," but the way Mann fleshed them out through his development of characters made them such a distinctive part of the film. And that's the biggest separator between these two films: Character. Sure, "Heat" has infinitely more exciting action beats, a better sense of pacing and an experimental but engaging musical score, but take those away and the film still works because Mann spends most of his time getting us inside the minds of his two lead characters.

With "Takers," I'm not even sure who the film is supposed to center on. We get the most off-the-job time with Matt Dillon's character, Jack, the aforementioned obsessed cop. Dillon's a fine actor but he's given almost nothing to work with, so we mostly just get some grimacing and low-voiced grumbling from him as he goes after this crew. What exacerbates this problem, though, is that there isn't anyone on the criminal side of the story to balance this out. You get the sense that Gordon (Idris Elba) is more or less the leader of the crew, but I only really assume this since he's got the biggest apartment of everyone else as he shows few other leadership qualities.

A heist movie of this sort is only as good as the crew taking down the score. Unfortunately the crew in "Takers" is about as engaging as a sack of hammers thanks to the thin script (which was credited to no less than four writers, an amazing fact considering how slim it feels). Paul Walker is practically a non-entity. Hayden Christensen tries valiantly to inject some personality into his part. Rapper T.I. "Tip" Harris is just flat-out annoying. Even the phenomenal Idris Elba (one of my favorite working actors thanks to his amazing turn on HBO's "The Wire") can't craft something engaging from the proceedings. Surprisingly, Michael Ealy and singer Chris Brown are the most affecting members of the crew, playing brothers. Somehow these two manage to wring some genuine pathos from the material and their final scenes together belong in another, better film that allowed their relationship to develop in a much more complete manner.

I sort of hate that I'm making so many direct comparisons to "Heat," since so few movies of the sort can really compete with it, not to mention I find it best to judge a film on its own merits. But there seems no other way to approach this review since the script seems to pull so heavily from Mann's Los Angeles crime epic for its inspiration. It wants to be as emotionally charged as "Heat," but director John Luessenhop just can't seem to make this cast crackle in any engaging way or the stakes to feel sufficiently high.

I was hoping there would at least be a nice shootout to ease the boredom inflicted by "Takers," but alas, any action to be found in this film was bland at best and horribly framed and edited at worst. I am hereby asking, nay, begging any filmmaker other than Paul Greengrass who wants to use the now standard "shaky cam" style in their action scene to immediately abandon the idea. It's horribly overused at this point and most directors have no clue how to properly implement it.

The only silver lining is that the film did well at the box office, which, despite my distaste for the film, I am slightly happy about since it means more people are now aware of Elba. The man is a phenomenal presence and performer when given the proper material, so anything that gets him closer to said material is a win, I suppose.

Grade: D-

Stewart Smith is the Entertainment Editor for the Tyler Morning Telegraph. Contact him at 903-596-6301 or by e-mail at ssmith@tylerpaper.com.

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