Taking the fun out of the heist

What was Idris Elba doing starring in “Takers”? I get that Matt Dillon hasn’t really done anything else since Crash, but Elba has proven with The Wire that he’s a quality actor. Not really sure why he got involved with this train wreck of a movie.

Somehow making a heist movie boring, Takers is a weird mash up of a movie. Leaving you neither rooting particularly for the cops or the bank robbers, you end up watching the whole thing unfold with a detached indifference, not caring whether any of the characters live or die. And Elba feels like he should be in a different movie – the strained cockney-accented arguments between him and his drug-addict sister feel out of place against the US backdrop, almost making you feel like the two of them have been lifted out of a Mike Leigh movie and dropped into the middle of this glossy American pap. Weird.

Matt Dillon is doping a version of the role that garnered him so much attention in Crash, whilst Chris Brown takes some time away from his normal routine of domestic violence to be easily the most annoying character in the film. He’s not the only awful performance in the film though, we also have the always uncharismatic Paul Walker (a poor man’s Keanu Reeves – and that’s saying something) and Hayden (I was in Star Wars, remember?) Christensen tries unsuccessfully to be intimidating.

Avoid.