By Preston Wilder
In Amsterdam in 1983, billionaire brewer ‘Freddy’ Heineken was kidnapped for ransom by a gang of local men. Heineken is played by Anthony Hopkins (whose scenes all take place in the same small room, meaning he was probably on set for a total of about three days), which is surely the only reason why this little-known thriller even made it to Cyprus cinemas. Well, that and Heineken itself, a global brand-name one associates with boozy good times – but the promise is false, and the fizz in this case proves undrinkably flat.
Generally speaking, criminals in heist movies come in two variations. Either they’re seasoned professionals who know exactly what they’re doing, their professionalism being precisely what makes them cool, or else they’re flawed and emotional, with distinctive personalities that end up clashing. Sometimes they can be both (see e.g. The Ladykillers) – but in this case they’re neither, Swedish director Daniel Alfredson (who made the mediocre second and third instalments of the Stieg Larsson Girl trilogy) going for the flawed-amateur route but forgetting to make his crooks distinctive.
Our nominal hero is Cor (Jim Sturgess), the rest of the gang including his brother-in-law Willem (Sam Worthington) and his former partners in a construction company. There’s also a younger brother, though surprisingly little is made of this (Alfredson may be sensitive here, since his own younger brother – Tomas, who made Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy – is a much better filmmaker). Cor has a wife, whose role is to announce that she’s pregnant then disappear for most of the movie. Willem is apparently a bit of a head case, though not in any memorable way (the famously wooden Worthington isn’t ideal casting). Ryan Kwanten of True Blood is also in the cast, but his role is so generic it could just as easily have been played by Ryan Reynolds, Ryan Giggs or Ryan O’Neal.
The film’s whole point seems to be the camaraderie between the gang: Hopkins gets a line, later repeated, that one can be rich in either money or friends (but not both), and a final caption informs us that the kidnappers never got together again “as a group” after the case was over – but in fact there’s no camaraderie between the gang, just a drunken New Year’s Day bash (where they hatch the plan) and the occasional bit of tired banter. The script is awash in clichés, down to the last scene where Cor observes that something’s not right, “it’s too quiet”. An early scene where the gang attempt to throw out the squatters who’ve camped in their building seems especially misjudged, Alfredson playing it for action-movie thrills with pounding music – a mistake, since the squatters seem to be harmless hippies and our heroes’ violence not especially righteous.
The trump card is Heineken, a.k.a. Hopkins – and the film even starts with a glimpse of the man before the opening credits, snarling self-made-billionaire axioms about making your own luck and not just sitting on your ass waiting for “the money fairy”. Once he’s been abducted, though, there’s very little for Sir Tony to play: Heineken is calm and unruffled, sizing up his captors with a Hannibal Lecter glare and making imperious “requests” for books and Chinese food. There’s no tension, no character conflict; when he angrily yanks at the chain binding him to the wall you half-expect him to pull out the chain, superhero-style, and throttle his kidnappers with it. It’s a smug performance, a ‘Special Guest Star Anthony Hopkins’ performance, and makes the film even more depressing.
There’s a better movie in the ashes of this one. The gang are so useless they leave their ransom note in the photocopier of the office next door (fortunately no-one has to use the copier during the day it takes them to realise their mistake and retrieve the note), and so amateurish they try to make a deal with Freddy where he’ll give them his “word of honour” not to co-operate with the cops once they let him go. “My word of honour?” he repeats, eyes shining with the mad joy of a hustler who’s found the perfect suckers. The story of some ordinary blokes who kidnap a ruthless capitalist and somehow outsmart him would’ve made a good story. The story of a ruthless capitalist who ends up corrupting these men – a final caption informs us that Cor and Willem ended up becoming “the godfathers of the Netherlands” after this first taste of larceny – would’ve made an even better story, implying that crooks and businessmen are essentially bedfellows. Kidnapping Mr. Heineken tells neither of these stories, and feels like it wouldn’t know how to. If this were a beer, it would be thin, insipid and lacking in flavour. A Heineken, in other words.
DIRECTED BY Daniel Alfredson
STARRING Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Anthony Hopkins
UK/Holland 2015 95 mins
