Takers Blu-ray Review

Takers - HT Guys Review - Overall  4.3 Stars (out of 5)

Synopsis

With their collective eye on a huge payoff, a motley crew of bank robbers (including Paul Walker, Michael Ealy, Chris Brown and Hayden Christensen) get busy planning out their next heist. Their former colleague, Ghost (T.I.), convinces the boys to target an armored car carrying $20 million. But a detective (Matt Dillon) who's obsessed with his work is just as obsessed with making sure the thieves never pull off their scheme. (Buy Now $20.99)

Starring:

Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Hayden Christensen, Jay Hernandez, Michael Ealy, T.I., Chris Brown, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Zoe Saldana, Steve Harris, Johnathon Schaech

Director:

John Luessenhop

Blu-ray Release Date:

January 18, 2011

Subtitles:

English, English SDH, French, Spanish, Portuguese.

Rating

Overall rating weighted as follows:
Audio 40%, Video 40%, Special Features 20%, Movie - its just our opinion so take it with a grain of salt

Audio 4.25 Stars (out of 5)

Dolby and DTS Demo Discs used as basis for comparison

• Subwoofer – 4.0 Stars
• Dialog – 4.5 Stars
• Surround Effects – 4.5 Stars
• Dynamic Range – 4.0 Stars

English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, French: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Portuguese: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1, Spanish: Dolby Digital 5.1

Takers audio mix is standard for most action films. However, there were a few choices that were made that surprised me. For instance, in a few scenes soundtrack music could be heard loudly in the rear channels. Then it would die down to allow dialog to be heard clearly. In a movie where a few explosions are key, I was surprised that the subwoofer didn’t get much action. However, gunfire was fun to listen to as it flew passed my head and over the couch.

Video  4.5 Stars (out of 5)

Spears & Munsil Benchmark Blu-ray Edition used as basis for comparison

• Color Accuracy  - 4.5 Stars
• Shadow detail – 4.5 Stars
• Clarity – 4.5 Stars
• Skin tones – 4.5 Stars
• Compression – 4.5 Stars

Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC, Video resolution: 1080p, Aspect ratio: 2.40:1, Original aspect ratio: 2.39:1

You wouldn’t expect a heist movie to have a large color pallet, but this film does. At times it almost seemed like a slick music video with various colored accent lights, a vivid sunset, and expensive suave suits. The movie has great facial detail showing the smallest wrinkles and five o’clock shadow. Dark scenes performed well without any blocking or grey shadows.

Bonus Features 4.0 Stars (out of 5)

• movieIQ
• BD-Live
• Filmmaker and Cast Commentary
• Executing the Heist: The Making of Takers
• Take Action
• “Yeah Ya Know (Takers)” By T.I. - Promotional Music Video.

Movie – 3.0 Stars (out of 5)

Review

Takers is not an original film, nothing new is really done here. In fact the main heist is a rip off of the movie “The Italian Job”, and a character in this movie even admits it. I’m conflicted by this movie because I like all the actors but they did nothing to make me care about the characters. However, it is hard to focus on one character when the cast is so big. There were a couple of times where I would think, “I didn’t know what’s his name was in this movie.”

The script for this film wasn’t very good either. The whole idea of showing part of the movie from a police officer’s perspective never pays off, and characters motivations and decisions are sometimes silly. However, considering this is an action film, there is a good shootout towards the end of the movie, it has some good quality fight scenes, and has an interesting chase on foot that made me out of breath watching it.