Takers

Takers
2010
Directed by: John Luessenhop
Starring: Idris Elba, Matt Dillon

So here it goes. Another story about another team of robbers. And the crazy thing is that Vinnie James was no where in sight! For all of these heist movies, the plot is pretty vanilla. Show one heist going well. Check. Show the relationship between the team of bad guys. Check. Show the cop with an all-too-familiar history on the force who is on the tail of the bad guys. Check. Any way you all get the point.

The problem with the movie was not the story, however. It was the acting. If you want to call it acting. Watching Paul Walker stumble over words and Chris Brown sit there and pretend to be an actor makes me frustrated. Are you ever driving down the road and see a car and say to yourself, "damn that car is a piece of garbage"? Well this movie was like that. It got the actors to where they were headed, but barely. They made a movie, but the acting caliber in Takers is less than sub par. It actually bothers me to use the word "acting" when referring to this movie.

The movie's only saving grace was Zoe Saldana. Yeah, the blue chick from Avatar. Anyway, she was in the movie for maybe five minutes. Five minutes! What the hell are these people thinking? She's gorgeous and a decent actress. You would think the filmmakers would have said, "hey maybe she should be in the movie more". Well another fail on their part.

The worst actor though had to be Matt Dillon. His vanilla and overbearing acting "ability" brought him over the edge to completely ridiculous. I felt that I was watching a bad episode of Entourage and he was Johnny Drama fighting for a role. Maybe the Dillon brothers should switch careers. Matt Dillon has the same personality and mannerisms in any movie. It seems like he is being shot out of a cannon, but they can only figure out one way to shoot him out of the cannon.

There is so much in this movie that made me not like it. I don't know how to talk about it all. It was a train wreck. The story has very possible potential, but the acting just brought it down. It's like what Saladworks does to salads. Making subpar items and making me spend $11 to realize how terrible it really was. If all heist movies were ingredients in a salad, Takers would be the very optional capers. No pun intended. I mean, what do you expect from a cast consisting of Chris Brown, TI, Paul Walker, and Hayden Christensen?

The very forgettable and sometimes laughable movie also had one of the worst chase sequences I have ever seen. I had heard rumors about a shaky camera, which I have to to admit was not that bad throughout the whole movie. However, in one scene where Chris Brown is being chased on foot by Dillon, the camera is shaking so much that it's hard to tell what's even going on. It didn't make me nauseous (except for the vomit called a story line). The chase scene showed Chris Brown jumping roofs, hopping fire escapes, and running faster that Usain Bolt. Maybe with his history of domestic violence, Brown needs to know how to run really, really fast. It was like watching parkour while sniffing Adderall. This was definitely the Chevy Geo of the film world.

Stars (out of 10): 3