Friday, 3 April 2015

"Kidnapping Freddy Heineken" (Guardian 03/04/15)


Kidnapping Freddy Heineken **
Dir: Daniel Alfredson. With: Jim Sturgess, Anthony Hopkins, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten. 95 mins. Cert: 15

The 1983 kidnapping of the Dutch brewing magnate here forms the basis of an understimulating caper with a confused attitude towards its would-be Everyman protagonists: criminal masterminds when plotting a speedboat escape along Amsterdam’s canals, they revert to gormless idiocy when faced with a photocopier. (Sam Worthington’s booming Strine accent would appear a liability from the off.) As Heineken, Anthony Hopkins enjoys a nice sit down in a small room for ninety minutes, while Swedish director Daniel Alfredson pushes the early-Eighties aesthetic beyond a joke: we’re left peering through dishwater levels of murk at third-or-fourth choice actors sporting persistently unflattering haircuts. Take beer goggles.

Kidnapping Freddy Heineken opens in selected cinemas from today.

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