Grimossfer
Clever and entertaining enough to recommend even to members of the 1%
Janae Milner
Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.
Phillida
Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.
Robin De Wilde
Years ago i read the book "De Heineken Ontvoering" by Peter R. de Vries. The book was written after many conversations with the kidnappers to get a first person feeling about the kidnapping of Freddy Heineken and his chauffeur Ab Doderer.Now anxious to see the movie about it, I watched it yesterday, but almost cannot find any reference of the real kidnapping, I followed the news in 1983 and read the book. The movie shows only highlights but the real story remains hidden on the big screen.Many details are not shown, like the blast furness is shown in one scene but not used like it was in the book, clothing and a referenced kidnapping was also discarded and many many more details missing in the movie. No suspense like the book gave, no thrilling feeling while watching, i even had trouble staying focused and awake during the movie.
Harm NL
Going on the knowlegde of the original story I was looking forward watching this. But what a disappointment. This might possible be one of the worst Dutch productions of the last years. No suspense, rushing plot line, bad acting, bad cinemography. The only highlight was seeing Hauer in action again.Especially in the middle part where there was opportunity for some suspense and story building, the movie seemed to speed up like crazy. Therefor the moment between ransom and captioning the bad guys was ridiculously fast paced.I struggled through the last hour to even finish it. 2 hours of my life I'm not getting back :)
peterdevries
The producers of this movie stressed that this movie was not strictly based on the book by Peter R. de Vries, the crime reporter. This book is (claimed to be) an accurate account of what the planning, kidnapping and aftermath actually was like. One of the greatest features of that book is the planning stage, which was incredibly meticulous and exciting. The producers decided to go their own way, but made a critical error. They assume that people know the story, and subsequently leave out key parts of the narrative. This leaves the audience guessing at times what is actually happening. The planning stage is almost completely skipped with the kidnapping taking place in the first 10 minutes of the movie. A bit later there is a scene where the kidnappers are waiting for a ransom money transfer but this goes awry. The problem is that it is not explained that this is a ransom transfer attempt, and uninformed people that are not familiar with the actual kidnapping do not have a clue what is going on. So the producers decide to NOT base the movie on the book, but trust that the plot is explained by the knowledge people have of the book. It's easy to see that this will not work, and so it doesn't. Pacing is also a problem as scenes seem to drag on forever and overall atmosphere is very negative and pressing. It seems like there is a fire burning underneath the movie and pressure is building, but it is never released soon enough to be a pay off for the audience. Acting is quite good, but the script and wooden dialogue aren't doing the actors much favor. Hauer as Heineken is a good fit, as is the main character who is a dead ringer for Willem Holleeder. It was a mistake to make a movie about a topic so famous that (almost) everyone knows the complete story and subsequently twist the story in the extent that they did. I almost wish Peter R. de Vries will go through with a script more strictly based on his book.
M P
After reading some books and seeing a lot of TV docs about the kidnapping i went to the cinema with a high expectation about this movie. I thought i was in the wrong cinema room. Perhaps 10% of the movies contains facts about the kidnapping. The 90% left is like a cheap local TV show. When the main character imitates a piece of Tony Montana it was like he was acting his first time. Maybe the movie was worth a 6 for a Dutch low budget movie but because of the bad acting and by not telling the true story i only give it 3 out of 10.Dutch movies like De Dominee are much better!
