The Takeover Review: A Dutch Action Thriller That Tries To Use The Hollywood Formula
Stars: Holly Mae Brood, Geza Weisz, Frank Lammers
Director: Annemarie van de Mond
Streaming Platform: Netflix
Filmyhype.com Ratings: 3/5 (three stars) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]
On November 1, 2022, the action-thriller The Takeover was released on Netflix. The Dutch director Annemarie van de Mond will direct it, here on her second feature film after having signed several TV movies and series episodes for the small screen. Now the Netherlands is not exactly the cinematography from which to expect a film belonging to the genre in question, with the local production that yesterday as today preferred to concentrate on other strands. In fact, by heart, the times in this sense can be counted on the fingers of one hand. When this happened, it was mostly due to sporadic hybridized individual initiatives as in the case of Kill Mode by Thijs Meuwese or Fight Girl by Johan Timmers, for international co-productions such as Jade Warrior by Anti-Jussi Annila or for foreign trips of Dutch filmmakers attracted by overseas sirens as happened for Jan de Bont and Paul Verhoeven. This is why the release on the stars and stripes platform of the van de Mond film immediately attracted our attention and curiosity of us and of all those who have had the opportunity to see it in these days, making it immediately enter the top ten of titles more seen.
The Takeover Review: The Story
Written by Hans Erik Kraan and Tijs van Marle, The Takeover mixes action and thriller to bring the classic manhunt to the big screen, which in this case is a woman played here by the well-known face of Dutch cinema and seriality Holly Mae Brood. She is not a person who has found herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, a witness despite herself to this or that crime, as happens in the vast majority of the stories that escape and the struggle for survival the centre of gravity of the plot, but the face. face to face between the sprawling mighty powers and the one who challenged them. That someone is an ethical hacker named Mel Bandison, who finds herself in the middle of two fires and framed for murder after unveiling a privacy scandal: on the one hand, she has to escape from the police, on the other she has to try to find the criminals. who blackmails her. A current issue that is however treated sufficiently, on par with an idea that serves as a pretext to give some substance to a disposable void.
The result is an all-out struggle between three opposing factions that takes place on and off the web, on the network and the streets of Rotterdam, in a race against time that from a certain point on in the timeline becomes very tight. Too bad that the user will have to wait a long time before this occurs, that is the beauty of sixty minutes of the ninety available. A late turning point that translates into a luxury that an action cannot afford, given that the pace and its management represent ingredients from which the basic recipe cannot ignore. Here then is The Takeover it gets into gear when the game is over and the time to try to get back to altitude is practically exhausted. If other key elements such as tension and the mystery line depend on this factor, then the situation becomes even more complicated.
The Takeover Review and Analysis
The protagonist is a hacker with a short history. At the beginning of the story God since childhood with another generation of hackers meeting her. The story brings her ability to entangle in danger, chased by people, and attempts to rely on the police fail. Before joining forces with her team of hackers, she solves the mystery of who her hunters are. which became a villain with a plan for world domination along with conspiracy theories that superpowers are behind which everything is according to the exact formula but at a low budget level The chapter, therefore, allows everything to proceed in a very simple way. Focus on locking in the rhythm to go faster. without having to put in the details to be very realistic Because the time of this story is less than 90 minutes, it’s a good thing that the story is concise and not arrogant. Considered enough fun to look at. With the chase scene to escape death like running continuously with a short hacking period A little bit to feel like you’ve used some of her skills. And then there’s the climax of a speed story, having to stop the automatic bus by hacking it in time which is a little exciting enough to get excited.
The movie also tries to play with the many new technologies that are coming into play in the wider world like driverless buses. The system scans the face and finds anyone through the camera installed in the city. Deep effect program that creates fake videos to slander anyone. to spying through the use of various apps that the user does not know or consent to Which is considered a good presentation of the bad effects of these technologies. But some things just look too unbelievable.
It also tries to insert a light love story into it by letting the heroine go on an online date before meeting a man who doesn’t match the cover of his specs. and then ran away. But when something happened, she tried to go back to him to hide. But it turns out that both of them have to come together on an escape adventure. Then a man who seemed to be helpless at first turns out to be an unexpectedly good support partner. It seems to teach you not to judge anything by appearance or first, let’s take a closer look at your true personality. During the crisis of this story, the heroine finally changes her negative attitude.
But the heroine herself is the part that doesn’t look very well. Because in many ways, she doesn’t look like a hacker. The appearance was not attractive. Called the creators trying to make her look like a nerd in front of the computer. But it didn’t feel like that at all. More than many of the chases to escape death, she’s similar to the free-runners too. Even more wrong from Luke Hacker. But rhythm is not the only problem that the public has to deal with and it negatively affects the final product. To this are added other glaring shortcomings that put together increasingly undermine the architecture of the film, both in terms of writing and of its framing. Narratively speaking The Takeover does not present anything original, or at least something that manages to give a semblance of novelty to the plot, its dynamics and the characters that animate them. Everything, including them, is tremendously derivative and already seen, as well as predictable.
Demerit of writing that chooses to cook and propose a heated soup of situations and development that awaken immediate analogies in the mind of the viewer, with the last minutes in particular that re-propose the dynamite race of the bus in Speed in another sauce. This does not excite and above all irritates those who demanded something more than a handful of chases and shootings placed here and there in the timeline, among other things not even so spectacular as to put the patches where they would have been needed.
The Takeover Review: The Last Words
A low-budget Dutch film that attempts to follow the formula of many Hollywood action thrillers. It tells the story of a hero who becomes entangled in a conspiracy theory-level villain. But with a small capital So everything comes out on a small scale. The chapter was written to be easily locked until many reasons are unreasonable But a short storytime makes things go fast until you can watch it and have fun passing.
