Film Review: Takers (2010)

(c) IMDB

Takers is a 2010 movie that is in essence. a poor man's HEAT (1995) with Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman.

Takers is directed by John Luessenhop and stars Idris Elba, one of my favourite actors, alongside Chris Brown, Hayden Christenson (one of my least fav actors) and Matt Dillon.

Like HEAT we have a crew, led by Elba who through meticulous planning carry out high risk robbery using shock and awe tactics, where no one gets hurt.  At this point, again as in HEAT at the beginning, they are of the police radar and no one knows they exist.

One of the gang is in prison and is released, we don;t know why and it is never explained, but there was clearly a back story as all of the gang despise this guy, but he comes to them with a plan for one big heist on an armoured car, sound familiar.... but that it needs to be done the following week.....

By now they are being pursued by two cops one of whom turns out to be dirty, but it wasn't the one I suspected, but again there was no real depth to the characters as there was in the previously aforementioned movie.. but did I mention the cop in this movie, like Hoffman, was separated/divorced and that he had a daughter who he drags around on a tail on his day off and he had her for the day.......

There are a couple of shoot outs that were not worth the effort and a nod to the recent American remake of The Italian Job on the attack on the armoured car but really it was all flash bang wallop and they would have done better making a 'new' movie rather than try to rehash a recent classic.

The ending was predictable and boring with most of the gang dying and the surviving cop lying on the tarmac of an airport, where did we see that before. I wonder?

My rating: A Big Fat Raspberry, don't wast your time

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeange

As a kid I loved my comic books, especially Marvel and DC comics.  I used to imagine I too had super powers or abilities like all the 'heroes' they gave to us. And then of course Saturday morning kids club at the cinema with Adam West's' Batman, did they actually realise back then how camp it looked, or is that just me today?



Speaking with Julia R Barrett recently, I did admit that my all time favourite didn't have any real powers but got them from an object, in this case his ring, yes The Green Lantern was always my favourite, followed by Thor, who if memory serves, back then, was a dentist with a limp and a cane!

In brightest day, in blackest night, No evil shall escape my sight Let those who worship evil's might, Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!!!

I have to confess though that by the time Ghost Rider came out in 1972 I was in the Army and didn't have a lot of time for comics, but with the thought I had boxes of them in the attic at home (still haven't forgiven a sibling when I discovered years later she had given them away - don't get me started) and so I was largely ignorant of this particular 'anti-hero'. 

Being the sucker I am for all things 'super hero' though, when I first saw that Nicholas Cage was starring in a movie with the name, I couldn't wait.... It wasn't a great movie but it had Sam Elliot in it, Mr Laconic himself, doesn't ever seem to say a lot, but that gravell voice, he and Kris Kristofferson should team up together , those voices in the same scene, I digress....  and not having read any of the comics, I couldn't draw any comparisons to it, but on the other hand, while the acting was fairly mediocre, the film engaged me and I enjoyed it in the spirit of comic book fayre and the fight against good and evil, with the basically good person being drawn into being the Devils acolyte  on earth, collecting all the bad souls.

And then along comes Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance and I thought great, this one will be even better...  How wrong can you be? Well in this case pretty wrong.  What's happened to Nicholas Cage, he showed so much promise in Peggy Sue Got Married, and then he made a couple of bummers and then he made a couple of good ones, but the bummers seem to out number the goodies.  And Marvel, really, I would have been embarrassed to release this as part of the franchise.

Even with those two excellent actors Ciaran Hinds and Idris Elbe the latter whom I absolutely love as DCI John Luther and the inclusion of Highlander Christopher Lambert, it really did not help.  And as much as I am an admirer of Mr Hinds, Peter Fonda was by far the superior Devil in this particular franchise.

Johny Blaze, basically told the Devil to F**k off at the end of the first movie and we now find him as a reclusive alcoholic living in a warehouse somewhere in Eastern Europe. It got worse from there on in and I am not going to give you any more detail on it.

Suffice to say, if you take precautions when sleeping around to avoid contracting an STD, I'd do the same with this movie,  avoid it like the plague, it is that bad....