MOVIE REVIEW: Kidnapping Freddy Heineken

Published Jul 24, 2015

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KIDNAPPING FREDDY HEINEKEN

DIRECTOR: Daniel Alfredson

CAST: Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten, Anthony Hopkins, Mark van Eeuwen, Jemima West

CLASSIFICATION: 16L

RUNNING TIME: 94 minutes

RATING: **

SURPRISINGLY bland, this British Dutch action movie is a clinical documenting of the ’80s real-life kidnapping of beer tycoon, Freddy Heineken. While not an actual documentary, it meticulously unpacks how five friends go about scoring the biggest ransom paid for an individual at the time.

Director Alfredson goes for a generic dramatisation of the events, sucking the energy out of what is actually a fascinating story of ordinary guys turned criminals.

There are plenty of risks to show in the planning and derring-do, but he emphasises and-then-and-then-and-then over excitement, turning in a made-for-tv film with a very odd casting.

The kidnappers were as Dutch as Heineken (Hopkins), but the actors all stick to their native English with varying accents and on the characterisation each of the men is only lightly sketched.

Very late in the film, in a dream sequence, the brains of the outfit, Cor van Hout (Sturgess), is asked by his wife if he’ll ever stop living in his imagination. But, since the character has always seemed so matter-of-fact and practical, this just comes out of left field.

Alfredson (The Girl Who Played with Fire, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest) seems to be pushing a theme voiced in the film by Heineken: “There are two ways a man can be rich in this world; he can have a lot of money, or he can have a lot of friends. But he cannot have both.” The disintegrating friendships are shown as the kidnapping drags into weeks and the men start quarreling over their course of action. But, since you never learn to distinguish one character from the next, you never learn to empathise with any of them.

You don’t exactly empathise with Heineken either, since Hopkins is channelling Hannibal Lecter more than anything else, once he starts engaging in his own version of psychological warfare.

We never understand from what we see how the timing actually plays out – some of the events took place over years – because the film drags on interminably, plodding along until, from out of nowhere, the guys are betrayed.

The stakes might be high, but never once do they produce even a frisson of delight, horror or tension.

Truth may indeed be stranger than fiction, but it doesn’t always make for an exciting story, especially when you cannot establish a reason for why the story should be considered compelling enough to turn into a film.

If you liked Survivor or The Forger, you will like this.

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