A review of the 2016 film “The Take”
This heist movie looks a bit like a French film: it is set in Paris with some great shooting of the city, many of the subsidiary characters are French actors playing French characters, and there is even a fair bit of French spoken – all of which won it French funding.
Or it might be taken for an American film because the two leading roles are American: a maverick member of the CIA with the skills of a Jason Bourne and an accomplished pickpocket who finds himself an unlikely partner of the action hero.
But, in fact, it’s a British work: the director and co-writer James Watkins and the two lead actors Idris Elba and Richard Madden are all British. The plotting is pretty ridiculous but the action sequences are well-done and it’s all watchable enough.