Rating: PG-13/10
US Certificate: PG-13
Once upon a time, a big gaggle of bank robbers, led by the ultra-suave Gordon Cozier (Idris Elba), made quite a nice living for themselves as takers, which is exactly what it sounds likeguys with lots of money and booze and gals who steal stuff as a vocation. This particular group is made up of John (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen), brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown) Attica, and newly-out-of-prison Ghost (T.I). Ghost is back just in time to turn the guys on to a sweet armored car robbery, but his loyalties arent where they used to be, and with detectives Jack Welles (Matt Dillon) and Eddie Hatcher (Jay Hernandez) on their trail, it seems as if the takers may be about to go down.
Nothing wrong with a good heist filmwhen done right, theyre fun, full of action, and they leave you thinking you might want to be a bank robber too. Think Oceans Eleven. When done like Takers, however, all the heisting and the shooting and the chasing grows monotonous and pointless, and all were left with is an ear-assaulting frenzy that leads to nothing of consequencenot even campy consequence.
So, for me, a good flick about robbin banks and shootem ups has to have a few key ingredients to make it stand out. Humor is a mustnot slapstick-y, guffaw humor, but I like my heisters to be slick and witty. Also, along the same lines, I like to LIKE my heisters, so at least three or four of them should be memorable in a character sort of way. Then theres the heisting itselfits gotta look good, and its gotta be clever. None of these things can be found in Takers, and it doesnt take too long to figure that out. Sure, theres a glut of good looking boys in fancy suits showing off the spoils of their thievery, but none of them make any impression, either as actors or characters (T.I. is especially bad as Ghost, and shouldnt abandon that rapping career of his). Maybe, though, if the action had been decent, but instead of giving us intricate heist plots or well-shot heist execution, it all just screams around like a loud and boringly jumbled mess with a few clichés tossed in for good measure (feathers shot out of pillows during hotel gunfire? Check.). Really, this probably looked better on paper, and it had a cast with potential, but somewhere between the paper and the filming, a pointless and shallow product was created. Its always nice to see Matt Dillon, but even he cant save this waste of time.
It's Got: Matt Dillon, nothing to get attached to, the gall to make bank robbing seem boring
It Needs: Witty banter, clever plots, better acting
Summary
Theres really nothing here to like, and for all its stars and all its ambition, its pretty much just dull.