Starring: Matt Dillon, Jay Hernandez, Hayden Christensen, Paul Walker, Chris Brown, Michael Ealy, Idris Elba, T.I., Zoe Saldana
Directed by John Luessenhop
Rated: PG-13
Run Time: 107 mins
Genre: Crime/ Drama/ Thriller/ Action
2.5 frames out of 5
Crime doesn’t pay, unless you are a Taker.
L.A. Police Officers Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) and Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez) find them selves in the middle of a high stakes crime ring when they are pulled onto the case of a very well planned, highly strategic bank heist. Who are the high stakes criminals? A group of 5 guys made up of various backgrounds, all in it for the big bucks. Brothers Jesse (Chris Brown) and Jake Attica (Michael Ealy) are the younger ones of the group, followed by ivy league scholar A.J. (Hayden Christensen); Sensitive playboy John Rahway (Paul Walker) and headed up by Gordon Jennings (Idris Elba). Each does it for his own personal reasons but they all know that they have each other’s back when it comes down to it.
When ex-team mate Ghost (T.I.) is released from prison, he bee-lines it to the Takers and tells him of a heist he cooked up with a few guys from the Russian Mafia. Gordon & the guys balk at the time line as the next heist would have to take place in 5 days. They debate after a while and decide to take the job since there’s about $25-$30 million in it for them if all goes well.
Well as we all know, things tend to go wrong when you have this many egos in one place. The team doesn’t trust each other; Officer Welles catches wind of what happened in the last heist and is now on their tail and the Russians are not making life easy for them. With so much money at stake, can the Takers complete the job with as little collateral damage, evade the authorities and get all that money?
Now is the time until mid October when the studios use this as their dumping ground for all the crap filler movies that they acquire over time. Takers is no exception to that rule. This movie lacked chemistry between the actors, lacked any sort of originality or hook that would keep the view interested for very long or matter yet care about any of these characters. Aside from one or two scenes, I was bored and mostly irritated by this film (or maybe it was the patron behind me shouting out commands to Chris Brown, T.I., and the rest of the cast trying to change the outcome of the film. Sorry to say people, no matter how much you yell at the screen, it won’t change the out come of the movie, I promise.) Anyway. You know when a movie is bad is when they have to refer to good action /crime movies in their film so you can get where the storyline is trying to achieve (a la The Italian Job)
Things to watch for: Frogger-esq chase scene with Chris Brown; killer selection of cars.
Who should see this movie: Fans of Chris Brown, T.I., Paul Walker, Hayden Christensen, Jay Hernandez; Fans of bad action films
See it in the Theater or Rent it on DVD: Save this for the Red Box rental. If you want to go see a good action movie go see The Expendables.
