'The Take' feels like it has all the major trademarks of the 'Action-crime-drama', which is why it takes a good cast & crew to separate itself from cliches and predictability. The concept is great: an unlikely team-up, a pickpocket gets caught up in a terrorist plot and is forced to join up with a CIA agent. Pair Richard Madden and Idris Elba as the two characters and you have two people that can elevate pretty much anything they're in. The first half does a nice job of subverting your expectations, something the second & third act seem to forget about accomplishing. The reason for that being that the scope of the film continues to increase with each scene, thus losing the thrill of having this being a smaller-scale crime-thriller. At first it feels like the 2016 film 'Focus', then a little more like 'The Purge' franchise, perhaps throw in a little 'Fast & Furious', and you have 'The Take'. A good film in its own right, though, all I could think about was how much I would still love to see Elba & Madden play James Bond one day.
7.1/10
7.1/10