Takers has all the requisite elements of a heist thriller. It’s got a crew of high-rolling, implausible stunt-performing, helicopter-detonating, walking-together-in-slow-motion bank robbers. It’s got a gruff, troubled cop who plays by his own rules (Matt Dillon). It’s got a pulverizing soundtrack and is so thoroughly saturated with testosterone that Roger Clemens could have injected it. What it doesn’t have is any kind of fresh take on the one-last-job genre, relying instead on set pieces pilfered from superior crime films, including the True Romance-biting climactic shootout. Nor does it offer any sense of why the audience should care which of the caricatures—er, characters—take the bullets and which take the briefcases filled with unmarked bills. Loud and lunkheaded, Takers is a heist movie undermined by stolen ideas.
This article appears in Aug 26 – Sep 1, 2010.
This is not a “one-last-job” thriller. Do any of these guys look like they are about to plan a retirement? No. Pay attention. They even mention The Italian Job – which means they are aware of that they take ideas from other movies. And, just because the shootout takes place in a hotel room, feathers flying, does not mean they ripped off True Romance. Who taught you to analyze movies, NSCAD?