Written by: Peter Allen, Gabriel Casseus, John Luessenhop, Avery Duff
Starring: Idris Elba, Paul Walker, Matt Dillon, Jay Hernandez, Michael Ealy, Tip “T.I.” Harris
Rating: [2.5/5]
Cast lists with an abundance of actors create the inherent juggling act of ensuring everyone involved gets a moment to shine in their own ways within a larger story. Something much easier said than done, especially when trying to be as twisty as Takers. A film about some supposed genius robbers who show nothing but stupidity in their decision-making throughout.
After the latest successful bank heist. A group of robbers led by Gordon Cozier (Idris Elba) bask in the glory of their latest prize as a former member of their group, Ghost (Tip T.I. Harris) gets released from prison. Ghost offers them a job where they hit an armored truck to take home their biggest payday yet, which they decide to take on despite all of the red flags involved.
A film like Takers truly only had one mission upon its creation and it was to sell this movie on the cast they had assembled. A group of good-looking dudes sauntering around in suits each having their own bit of charisma and it works but doesn’t at the same time. It certainly succeeds when looking at the chemistry built between these men and the crew they form. They give off the feeling of working together for years and having an admiration for what each of them brings to the table. In this ensemble, they bring together some names but never quite discern whether their acting abilities brought the necessary juice to the table.
Yes, we have strong actors like Idris Elba and Michael Ealy in the mix, who certainly demonstrate their talent but everyone else mightily struggles to the point where it becomes grating to watch. Hayden Christensen and Paul Walker already typically struggle in their acting, but when adding Chris Brown and T.I. into the fold, their scenes just don’t cut it. T.I. in particular walks into this film as some mastermind and you just never buy it because his performance does not evoke this feeling of fear that the characters should feel in dipping their toes in the water with him once again. It takes you out of the entire experience.
However, as a heist film, some focus of the review should lie in looking at how these operations go, and for the most part, they’re quite serviceable. The opening sequence demonstrates what makes them incredibly proficient in their jobs and then the last-minute additional heist exhibits their ability to quickly pull things together. These moments have their exhilarating moments as anyone would want in heist films as well as showing the work that goes into pulling something off to the degree seen in this feature. Each of these individuals has a specialty they bring to the table and it gets displayed in the setup for this heist. This area the feature excels in, but mightily struggles everywhere else, especially in the characterizations of these individuals at the center of the story.
On a character level, time gets split between the cops and the robbers in showing some of their backstory and why they do what they do. Each set doesn’t play by the rules necessarily but one side has the law as backup. It harkens back to what Heat did much more successfully than this feature showing the separate lives of these two sides and then having them collide, but in this instance, all of it feels much more surface-level. Far too many characters to juggle and those who received more focus did not receive something full leaving most arcs, if any, incomplete. Also, from the very introduction of Ghost into this story, we have characters acting out of what they have presented in the short moments we have seen them. They have their rules about when they take a job and how it gets done and they break it all of a sudden because of Ghost’s suggestion in a manner that feels beyond dumb and the way this feature tries to set up a twist in the most obvious manner shows these characters to be quite dumb. Not because of this situation but it surprises how they have not been caught before with the level of decisionmaking going on here.
If one wants to shut off their brain and watch a heist movie with some handsome dudes wearing suits and acting like bros, then Takers may just provide all one would need. However, once even the most cursory observation of the feature is made, it begins to fall apart very quickly and quite dramatically. It wildly struggles with its horrendous editing that nearly gave me a headache in these overly long chase sequences and then you have the horrid mismanagement of Zoe Saldana, who exists as a nothing character and merely a device used by these men. Truly an undercooked story and one quite dull for a heist film.
Films with Josh 
