Takers’ bank robbers are clearly clueless about there being no honor among thieves, since despite some minor reservations, they’re quite comfortable reenlisting with shady former cohort Ghost (T.I.) after he gets out of jail for serving time because of a prior heist gone wrong. Then again, since John Luessenhop’s film is merely a mini-Michael Mann effort populated by one-dimensional clichés, it’s hard to get too worked up about their subpar decision-making skills. Led by Cozier (Idris Elba), the story’s criminal protagonists are a preposterous bunch, a jazz-cool rat pack in sleek suits who are seduced by Ghost into doing a hastily assembled job involving hijacking an armored car. Luessenhop’s tale mercifully does away with traditional recruiting-the-crew sequences, but he otherwise hews to formula with gusto, from cops Welles (Matt Dillon) and Hatcher (Jay Hernandez) flirting with any-means-necessary illegality, to romanticized portrayals of the plot’s main players, who are defined by their sibling relationship (Michael Ealy and Chris Brown), their tattoos and bowler hat (Hayden Christensen), or their silver sports cars (Paul Walker). With each of its crooks given their own showpiece sequence, Takers’ action has vigorousness and lucidity. However, never amounting to more than a technically proficient assembly-line genre work, it’s can’t overcome hackneyed storytelling and insipid ciphers whose uniqueness and charisma is inversely related to the director’s desire to glorify them.
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