(Long Island, N.Y.) Well, I guess it was asking too much to review three solid movies in a row, wasn’t it? Alas, Takers, a crime flick directed by John Luessenhop, breaks the streak. Like Piranha 3D last week, Takers boasts an ensemble cast of D-grade actors, but unlike the killer fish movie, these guys don’t manage to make the film enjoyable. Matt Dillon, the “Fast and Furious” Paul Walker, “Kid Darth Vader” Hayden Christensen, Chris Brown, Idris Elba, T.I., Jay Hernandez, and Zoe Saldana round out the cast, and each of them tries their hardest to look real pretty while wearing designer suits and spewing out an endless stream of horrible diolague. Walker puts it best when he says at one point:
“We’re takers. We take things. That’s what we do.” Yeah. Okay. It’s like they took 1995’s Heat, an actual good movie, and made it metro-sexual. And, as the risk of being redundant, stupid.
So, Takers is about a gang of…um, “Takers.” The gang is made up of Gordon (Idris Elba), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), John (Paul Walker), Jake (Michael Ealy) and his brother Jesse (Chris Brown). Anyway, the “Takers” want to “take” money from a bank that’s on the 14th floor of a skyscraper. Oh, and then this buddy of theirs named Ghost (T.I.) gets out of the joint and wants to do a fun little armored car job ’cause he’s got debts to settle. And let’s not forget the Russian mobsters that Ghost met in lock-up who show up to make life difficult for our well-dressed heroes.
Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez also play cops who are forced to deal with all these shenanigans, but I can’t feel sorry for them because I know they’re really actors playing cops and they’re getting paid. The audience isn’t, sadly.
Takers’ story is unoriginal and actually pretty bad, and while the acting is nothing to write home about either, there’s at least a few stand-outs among its cast. Kid Vader…I mean, Hayden Christensen, actually manages to impress slightly more than he did in the horrible Star Wars prequels. Suffice it to say, he handles a broomstick better than he does a light-saber, at least. T.I., a rapper (and one of the film’s producers) does a solid job as the smooth-talking Ghost, the member of the “Takers” that shows up back on the scene with a hidden agenda after doing a five year stretch in the pen. Dillion, meanwhile, does his usual act, but playing the same part in every movie he makes somehow seems to work for him, so whatever.
On the other side, Paul Walker can’t act. At all. Yet he keeps getting cast in movies- I think he’s doing yet another Vin Diesel car racing flick after this. He must be stopped!
Aside from the actors, there’s lots and lots of stylish shootouts in Takers but, as much as I love action, they still manage to bore. It’s like the producers knew they had a dud on their hands and insisted that lots of mayhem shot in totally conflicting styles would cover it up, and the end result is the ultimate expression of style over substance (or realism). Like, there’s a shootout in a hotel room and 800 tons of feathers are flying everywhere even though there’s only 4 or 5 pillows in the room.
But, the evil plans of Takers’ producers appears to have worked: Takers was number one at the box office this past week. It’s not a crime that it
was number one-
I mean, it’s not a horrible movie. In fact, out of the rather barren field of ‘eh’ movies available this week, you certainly could have done worse, but it’s just so generic. The look, the feel, the lines…you’ve seen them a million times before, done better. Come to think of it, I said almost the same thing about Piranha 3D last week, but somehow that movie still ended up being enjoyable while Takers was just a chore.
It’s all about your attitude- Piranha 3D aspired to be a lighthearted throwback to T&A monster movies, while Takers aspires to be nothing more than a GQ ad with guns. Still, like I said, out of what’s currently available in theaters, you could do worse. Not much, but it’s possible.
