Takers is a film that is far more about style than substance. This style is often cold and unconvincing but it does deliver workable performances and some truly cool action scenes. Also, it is awfully blue.

Takers is a pretty standard heist movie about a highly skilled team of thieves who are being pursued by a hardboiled cop (Matt Dillon) with a troubled marriage and a deteriorating relationship with his daughter. When a former team member (rapper T.I.) is released from prison and brings the team an armored car job from some Russians, they decide to break their rule about waiting a year between jobs and take it (because that’s what they do). A 20 million dollar payday is pretty tough to turn down after all. The movie then throws out just about every genre cliche you can imagine with characters who feel like they were assembled from a to do list of robbery movies (although they do forgo the ‘new addition to the team that one guy vouches for but turns out to be a murderous psychopath) and plot developments we have seen many, many times before. And most of them if you just watch the movie this was clearly trying to emulate, Michael Mann’s Heat (1995). Despite the many, many problems Takers does manage to satisfy on some levels if you are willing to drop the bar low enough.

First of all, the writing here is really bad. I don’t want to hear any ‘but it is an action movie’ bullshit on this. It has action in it and while those moments are successful, the movie is obviously trying for taught suspense and gritty characterizations. The ‘twists’ that occur are meant to shock but are telegraphed from a mile away. The characters are given business to try to offer depth but these moments are constructed of cliche at best and outright ridiculous at worst. When  Jake (Michael Elay) and Jesse (Chris Brown) talk about going to see their dad in the pen, Chris Brown rants about how he went to Juvie and he is never going back, not for his brother, his dad or anybody. Seriously? Juvie? Okay I get that it is kid prison but I can’t imagine that it has quite the same punch as grown up jail. I would have thought they could have delivered something more hard hitting by way of prison experience especially for two characters who’s last name is ‘Attica.’

Matt Dillon’s detective character has Internal Affairs breathing down his neck while his partner Eddie (Jay Hernandez) has a son who needs dialysis. Ghost (T.I.) has beef with his old crew because they left him to get pinched and wouldn’t you know that Jake is now with Ghost’s girl (a criminally underused Zoe Saldana)? Leader of the group Gordon (Idris Elba) has a sister who keeps failing out of rehab and shows up at just the wrong time for him while planning the heist (you can see where that is going to go). Paul Walker’s John goes mostly undeveloped as the second in command but he does fall into Paul Walker cliches and manages to show his abs as much as possible, which in this case is a scene in a swimming pool with two women. Hayden Christensen’s AJ doesn’t really fall into any particular cliche’s but he does wear a hat that is criminally stupid looking and allows for any number of Star Wars Jokes to be made.

Even with all the cliches given to the characters to pass for depth, all of them feel remarkably shallow. I can’t say that I really cared that much for any of them and with story time sacrificed for action scenes the character development really gets the short shrift. That is why Heat was 188 minutes and didn’t have all that much action I suppose.

The problems with the writing don’t stop at the cliches and lack of character development. Dialogue is mostly terrible not the least of which is trailer line ‘We’re takers, that’s what we do. We take.’ This line just made me wince and did not make me smile the way a similar line did in Australia when the Drover proclaims ‘I’VE GOTTA DROVE!’  Revelations are arrived upon after silly connections are made. Like a detective pinning an incredibly generic hand gesture on a guy he sees outside of a hot dog stand. If that is going to be the linchpin of putting these guys together for a crime the hand gesture should have been more specific. It seems like I am nitpicking but really this is just one example of all the ways the move cheats the audience out of good storytelling. Finally, the ending really seems like the writers just sort of threw their hands in the air and wrote as generic a finale as possible because it had to end sometime as opposed to the story driving to a particular conclusion. It was just sort of there and was servicable at best. That the last act of the movie dragged and sort of meandered as if the writers were fresh out of ideas did not help.

With all this bad going on it is kind of amazing that there is some really good stuff here. The performances were generally good. Matt Dillon didn’t do himself many favors here as an over serious cop who reminded me of an over the top role Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) would play on HBO’s Entourage, but the rest of the cast turn in solid efforts. I am a big fan of Idris Elba and while this is not new ground for him to cover he does his best with it and grounds the whole thing with class and confidence. Paul Walker is more or less Paul Walker here and if you happen to think he sucks I doubt he will change your mind. I generally like him so I am good. Hayden Christensen, despite that fucking hat, also acquits himself well and is one step closer to shedding his bad rep from Star Wars. Michael Elay does his best with a pretty drab role and T.I. does well for himself although he does fall into the ‘rapper as unrepentant bad ass’ cliche. If this movie happened 10 years ago his role would have been played by DMX. One of the real standouts, though, is Chris Brown and it pains me to say that. I feel the way I would about it if Michael Vick did well in a movie. Domestic violence aside, Chris Brown is a pretty good actor. Probably how he manages to get girls to still go out with him.

Stronger than the performances are the action scenes. These are cool because they are all generally very different from one another. The film is not satisfied with just repeating the same gun fights over and over so it offers up intense and cool foot chases, car chases, intricate heists, gun fights and stand offs. It also allows each of the characters badass moments to shine so no one seems wasted in these scenes and everyone can hold their weight. The best of these scenes is the foot chase between Chris Brown’s stunt double and Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez.  Jesse is apparently an accomplished Parkour expert in addition to wearing suits with the sleeves rolled up and the twists and turns that the chase takes makes it really exciting and fun to watch. As an aside: Parkour has become so ubiquitous in action movies at this point that I think police forces are foolish to not add it into their training regimens. That way they wouldn’t have frustrated detectives frustratedly slamming on gates in frustration while watching the crook run off to jump over another building.

Conclusion 6.5 out of 10

I didn’t hate Takers and it wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but it is not, strictly speaking, a good movie. It is a marginally successful movie if you are able to ignore everything that is wrong with it and just enjoy the good bits. They are there you just have to look a little harder to find them. This would be good for a rental if you are looking for a light action movie and aren’t expecting too much. I sure wouldn’t pay full price at the theater for it though.