The one thing you can say about Takers is that it doesn't shy away from being a complete rip-off. The big heist in the film is inspired by the Italian Job. And how can I be sure about that? Because when T.I.'s character first brings it up, he says, "Let's go Italian Job on that ass." The one problem is that while the set-up of the heist is from Italian Job, the coolest part of that film - the mini-cooper chase, isn't in there. Instead it's just people running around and in one of the bigger chase scenes, I couldn't help but laugh at how Chris Brown's character kept doing all this crazy parkour shit but the guys chasing him managed to keep up with him simply by, you know, running. There's also an odd moment in which everyone gets upset that one of the Takers shot a cop. Mind you, this moment came right after they had just killed a handful of security guards in a daytime shootout in the middle of the street. The film sets itself up as silly fairly early (with a headscratching, "that was lucky" escape) but the film tries to play itself as somewhat realistic so the silly stuff stands out.

The film tries to give its characters some depth but it doesn't really add all that much. It just kind of seemed like they were trying to fit in all of the heist movie plot points and didn't every really get any of them right. In the end, it just feels like a shoddy straight-to-DVD fake sequels to Heat or The Italian Job. I didn't mind the film about halfway through but that's also because I thought the film was 3/4's of the way through and didn't realize how much more I had to watch. The last half of the movie dragged and by the end of it I was completely unimpressed and barely entertained. Unless you absolutely love any and every heist movie, I can't recommend "Takers".