Takers

I found myself watching “Takers” the other night. Your first question is probably, “why?” The answer is, “I don’t know.” Your second question is probably, “why did you bother to write about it?” The answer is, “I had to.”

From the very beginning the movie hammers you over the head with the idea that this is an action movie. The bank robbery scene has no gravity to it, their escape plan is completely retarded and they calmly walk away from an exploding helicopter…without looking back. Yeah, originality isn’t big in this movie. And if “Takers” was an action movie then I would be fine with it, but it isn’t written like one. My guess is that someone was writing a very serious, very believable heist movie that wasn’t very good and didn’t really have an ending just yet, and someone found it, punched it up with some action scenes and put it into production.

The very beginning of the movie made me hate what I guess we can call “the heroes” of the movie. They rob a bank and then wave down a traffic helicopter? The actual probability that a news chopper would be in the air when the bank robbery call went out, and be close enough by to get there in the mere minutes the robbers have to escape, and the pilot would be stupid enough to illegally land on the top of building is ridiculously low. The whole reason that the heist movie genera is cool is because it’s about clever criminals manipulating the people and structure of everyday life in order to obtain something special or important. They are full of originality and outside of the box ideas that surprised and delight the audience. There is nothing clever and interesting about waving down news helicopter and just hoping that it lands.

 

So after the movie establishes that it’s going to be an exciting, action packed movie with people walking away from explosions in slow motion, the characters put on suits, sit on a boat and discuss their investments. They sit around, drink, smoke cigars and calmly discuss their previous job and the new job that TI is proposing.

 

Wow, I’m on the edge of my seat. You figured that they maybe would do something exciting. They have exciting, action packed jobs, so you might think that their lives would mirror them. Maybe they would race around on their motorcycles or do something dangerous for fun in their downtime. But no, they sit around like they are Warren Buffet, getting drunk on fine scotch and talking about the latest Bloomberg report. Going from exciting action scenes to dead-stop, boring realism destroys the flow of the movie. It’s like driving 90 miles an hour for 3 minutes and then 10 miles an hour for the next 20, and while some might argue that the scenes were needed to add backstory and details crucial to the story’s development, the fact is that all the information given to the audience turns out to be either useless or misleading.

So after boring dialogue came the next action scene, where Anakin Skywalker beats the snot out of some rednecks in a trailer.



While it didn’t make much sense to send Anakin into the trailer alone and it wasn’t believable that the skinny, good looking white boy was able to beat up three burley rednecks at once, the scene became outright stupid when the last bloodied, half conscious baddie decides to finally pull his gun out. If you have a gun, don’t you pull it out first? They could have saved themselves an ass kicking if they would have just pulled the gun out first. Maybe Anakin used the force to make the bad guy forget he had a gun tucked into his pants. Maybe the director realized that if the bad guy pulled the gun out first then they couldn’t have a fight scene. But why did the bad guy need a gun in the first place? I cannot think of a single reason the gun needed to be in the scene since it was never used and only flashed momentarily at the end; I guess it was just there to destroy the audience’s suspension of disbelief.

After a more boring dialogue and some “men working hard” montages, they get to the part where they are going to attack some armored trucks. They are going to do it “Italian job style” as TI puts it, because apparently the writer had used up all of his creative juices coming up with the ingenious “wave down a helicopter” escape plan. When bomb goes off and the trucks don’t fall through the street like they are supposed to, and I was stunned. What are they going to do now? Abort the mission was my guess. The movie is supposed to be realistic and logical, so they should just walk away right then and there. TI was dressed as a cop and no one knew he was part of the heist attempt, Paul Walker was hanging out in a parking garage, and the rest of the team was underground and totally unseen. They don’t really need the money and it’s established early on that they are doing the job out of boredom more than anything. They live in mansions, drive fancy cars, date beautiful women and are deathly afraid of going back to jail.



Well, if this was a smart movie with logical criminals, then they would have fled and the movie would have been over. Instead, they decided to get into a gun battle with the security service from a downhill, exposed position. The cops are standing above them and shooting down into the hole that they are standing in. Have they never heard of the term “fish in a barrel?” Meanwhile, Paul Walker just outright attacks the convoy, walking right up to a guard holding a gun and just punches him in the face. At this point, you realize that all the posturing and preening about being a “professional” group was total bullcrap. The whole lead up dialogue meant nothing and was just filler meant to lead to the next action sequence. They have no masks, no bulletproof vests and no plan whatsoever. They just decide to wing it and see what happens, instead of just walking away from the situation like a smart criminal would.



So after some more action stuff and Chris Brown showcases his parkour skills for an unreasonably long amount of time, they end up getting into a gun fight with some Russians. Now I am all for gunfight scenes and I have to say this was a good one. Anakin gets shot, they actually run out of ammo on occasion and they pleasantly surprised everyone by not copying the slowed down bullet scene from “The Matrix.” However, the music chosen for the scene is completely stupid. You would think maybe an alternative rock or maybe techno type of instrumental would be used, like they do in every other action movie, right? Nope! Slow, sad classical music! The type of classical, string music that you see accompanying scenes of slavery or genocide. This is the big climax! The big shootout! And the audience is supposed to be considering the tragedy of the violence? Or perhaps we are supposed to feel bad for the crew and the predicament they got themselves into? This is a group of dangerous, gun toting bank robbers that spent a majority of the morning shooting at innocent security guards…why all of a sudden is there tragic music? The music actually got me excited at first, because I figured all of them were going to die. Why else play the sad music, right? Nope, just Anakin, and he only dies because he decided to jump in the air in front of a guy with a shotgun. I’m not sure what Anakin was thinking or what he expected to happen; didn’t he know what a shotgun does?



It’s these types scenes and these very events that take the viewer out of the movie. You can’t root for a guy that’s overly stupid and you can’t get emotionally tied into a story that constantly makes the audience question the logic of the heroes. In the next scene, the two brothers find out that TI killed their girlfriend and took all their money. Grief stricken, they promise to get revenge on TI. Two scenes later, they drunkenly stumble towards some cops waving shotguns, making the audience start to wonder if this movie was meant as a crime thriller spoof but it was just so poorly written and edited that all the sarcasm got sapped out of the final cut.



I would really like to talk to William Packer (“Puff Puff Pass” & “Stomp the Yard”), Michael Ealy (“2 Fast 2 Furious” & “Underworld: Awakening”), Tom Lassally, Jason Geter, and Gary Gilbert and ask them what they thought of the final product. They certainly had a talented cast and a complete idea for the movie, but it just seems poorly thought out and lazy. As producers, they are supposed to be in charge of making sure that movies turnout as intended, and I don’t think they meant to make a movie that has a hokey action sequences with 20 minutes of monotone dialogue between them. “Takers” doesn’t feel real enough to care about, yet it isn’t exciting enough to make the audience want to watch it. Things just kinda happen, and we see them happen, and then it’s over. The audience can’t connect with the characters because we never understand the characters are very strong or well written. Except for TI, who was excellent in this film. Now understand, when I say TI was excellent I don’t mean the “he played his character well,” I mean “he played himself well.” TI fit this film very well and he matched his character perfectly.



He has swagger and attitude, and you totally believed that he just spent years in jail. He was mysterious, with a painful past and you are never sure what he is thinking. His old crew doesn’t like him, when they really should, and they have all his money and they keep planning to kill him. When he betrays them and kills Lilly, I felt like TI was justified. He got shot, abandoned by his crew, left to die or rot in prison, and then when he gets out they stole his girl, they are holding his money and don’t trust him at all. Perhaps if they welcomed him back with open arms he wouldn’t have tried to have them killed.

All said, “Takers” was really disappointing. They had a solid cast and could have really made a nice movie. Instead they made something that was worthy of going straight to DVD.