Take the money and run
Big stars and ragtag team pull off an entertaining caper flick
By Erik Hayden 09/02/2010
Takers
Directed by John Luessenhop
Starring: Matt Dillon, Chris Brown, Hayden Christensen, Tip T.I.
Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, a sexual situation/partial nudity and some language.
1 hr. 47 min.
What I learned last weekend: Moviegoers don’t have an insatiable appetite for Avatar. As strange as it sounds, the slapped-together “Special Edition” of the highest grossing picture of all time managed only a whimper at this weekend’s box office, as audiences flocked to an unheralded dark horse: Takers.
Directed by John Luessenhop and featuring a cobbled-together lineup of fading A-listers, rising B-listers and rapper T.I.’s promotional prowess, Takers proved to the summer dog days that a flashy, two-dimensional heist movie is always in season. Overcoming its bland title, sometimes poor acting, miniscule budget and stilted dialogue is no easy feat. Especially when the film draws from sources as diverse as the Oceans franchise, Michael Mann’s landmark Heat and, oddly enough, HBO’s venerable Entourage series.
Perhaps the strongest influence of the three is the Entourage tie. Plenty of cues are taken from Vince, Ari and the gang as Matt Dillon (ironically, the brother of Kevin “Drama” Dillon), Hayden Christensen, Chris Brown and T.I. roll through Los Angeles area nightlife hotspots in designer suits to a cranked-up soundtrack. It also helps that, even though a few of the gang deliver mechanical performances, they seem to have enjoyed each other’s company enough to be believable as a cohesive heist unit.
The film’s plot, of course, revolves around the proverbial “last big heist.” Can the ragtag crew manage to extract the $20 million in cash from the bank’s armored vehicle and dash away to sunnier shores without getting caught? Who’s the traitor in the group? When does the inevitable plot twist arrive? And why is Zoe Saldana in the film for only about five minutes? (Answer: it appears to have been green-lit before James Cameron’s juggernaut.)
Surprisingly, it’s T.I. who serves as the focal point for the plot, as his character Ghost provides the detailed plans that are used by the rest of the crew to hijack the bank’s armored vehicle. And the heist itself, which occurs in the middle third of the movie, is surprisingly well-executed from a technical standpoint. I’ve seen plenty of caper flicks, and they all tend to evolve in the same way (read: group gathers, then plans, then executes, it all goes wrong, some die, some get rich, end of film). But the way the actual armored car was seized, and some of what happens in the immediate aftermath, was taut, suspenseful and entertaining — especially an extended chase sequence involving Chris Brown, who apparently has near-superhuman agility.
Much of the credit for elevating what could have been a disaster of a movie goes to director John Luessenhop. There were plenty of scenes that looked like the dialogue was cut short, sped up, smartly edited or just completely eliminated which made the film zip more quickly without telegraphing all its key moments. Luessenhop seems to have understood that audiences have seen plenty of heist flicks before, and he lets that prior experience guide the film rather than trying to reinvent the wheel.
Also, from a production standpoint, the closely cropped shots during the action sequences did an excellent job of masking the small (by Hollywood standards) $30 million budget the movie was slated for. There’s nothing worse than a director who tries to shoot a Lord of the Rings sequence (i.e., humongous view of hundreds of computer creations/explosions) with poor CGI. Instead, Luessenehop settles for a shootout in a room of L.A.’s Roosevelt Hotel as the film’s climax, which brings out the inevitable twists and genre conventions, but still manages to be a satisfying diversion.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT