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A.J. (Hayden Christensen) launches into action as one of several efficient bank robbers in the action drama “Takers.” |
“Takers” ranks as one of the most pretentious, ill-conceived and badly botched heist movies ever made.
“We’re takers!” shouts Gordon Jennings (Idris Elba), leader of a band of efficient and elusive L.A. bank robbers. “We take!”
They sure do.
They take the famous armored car robbery plot from “The Italian Job.” They take the messy hotel room shootout from “True Romance.” They take the final scene from “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” (plus the line “Who are those guys?”). They take the street gunfights from “Heat.”
They take and take and take!
And what do they give us in return?
A dour, soulless action movie riddled with dopey, expository dialogue, dislikable characters, horribly misplaced music (a sad cello playing during a violent shootout?) and a hyper editing style so cranked up and blurry that you can’t tell what’s going on in most of the action sequences.
This last criticism is particularly annoying when bank robber Jesse Attica (Chris Brown) leads cop Jack Welles (Matt Damon) on a dynamic street chase through L.A. and escapes by performing some of the best and boldest parkour moves since the French thriller “District B-13.”
But the sequence has been shot so tight and edited so quick that we never really see how magnificent these stunts are. “Takers” actually undermines its own quality. (Read more…)