Takers

My favorite part of watching Takers was the moment before the film started, when the Cineplex decided to lower and raise the lights as if we were at the opera. Takers isn't the worst movie ever, but it's not like we were getting ready to see La Traviata.

Jesse (Chris Brown), Jake (Mike Ealy), A.J. (Hayden Christensen) , Gordon (Idris Elba) and John (Paul Walker) are the baddest, most efficient, smartest and best bank robbers the world has ever seen, except, no one has ever seen them because they are so good they have never been caught.

They walk the streets of the Los Angeles like successful businessmen, investing their ill-gotten booty, driving fancy cars, living in the ritziest of homes, spending time with beautiful women and hanging out at the coolest lounges (Who said crime doesn't pay?).

Jack (Matt Dillon) and Eddie (Jay Hernandez) are the detectives assigned to solve the group's latest heist, but someone from the past is about to complicate things. Ghost (T.I. Harris), who was part of the crew until he was arrested, has just gotten out of jail, (Just like T.I.! He should have told the world he went to jail to study and prepare for the role of an ex-con) and he has a tip on a great chance to score millions upon millions of dollars, but they only have 5 days to plan and execute the heist. Will they be able to steal the cash?

Can they trust Ghost?

Will Jack and Eddie catch them before they can finish the planning?

For the most part, Takers is a serviceable, passable, entertaining heist movie until it collapses under its own weight towards the end of the movie. Maybe the best way to describe Takers is to call it Ocean's 11-lite.

Director/co-writer John Luessenhop and his team of co-writers put a great deal of work into giving each robber (and the cops chasing them) some sort of backstory, conflict and personal drama, but don't give us the same depth of details about the robberies themselves. The group obviously has tons of talent and ability, but we never get that great insight into the plan they are putting together (one of my favorite scenes in any heist movie).

They only have 5 days to plot the job, yet, they can obtain official uniforms, heavy digging equipment, actual LA public works vehicles and more in an instant and without explanation?

Their history together is some sort of driving force behind making Ghost part of the gang again, yet, we don't learn much about how they met each other, why they started working together or the infamous job that led to Ghost's incarceration?

All of that would have helped, since the personal drama, which may have pushed all of those details and scenes out of Takers, doesn't do all that much to get us wrapped up in the characters.

Also, you have to wonder about some of the weird choices like having Elba use some weird British cockney or heavily Jamaican or island accent (which comes and goes from time to time). Christensen appears in almost every scene wearing his little hipster hat, but they never explain how it is lucky or has meaning (does it allow him to use The Force?). We even have Ghost all upset about a woman from his past, but it becomes a wasted fact with no impact because it is dropped almost as soon as it is introduced.

The action is good and intense, we get a couple great chase scenes, and we are always wondering how this will all unravel or not, so Takers keeps us entertained enough (and the movie especially entertained the women in the audience I saw it with when Elba's character gets out of bed wearing his boxer briefs, I guess that's what it sounds like at a bachelorette party when the stripper shows up).

Takers is rated PG-13 for intense sequences of violence and action, a sexual situation/partial nudity and some language.