Take Down is mostly about spoiled rich kid Kyle (Jeremy Sumpter), who gets into a drunk driving incident that nearly kills his friend Amy (Phoebe Tonkin). For his bad behavior, his father sends him to a school in a remote Scottish isle. There, spoiled heirs like him (and coincidentally, Amy) are taken away from all the luxuries to which they’ve grown accustomed and taught various survival skills. And these skills come into play when a bunch of kidnappers arrive and take over the island. Only Kyle is initially able to escape capture, and he must use everything he’s learned to save his new friends.
Take Down takes too long to get going. It spends a surprisingly long time setting things up, even going as far as introducing who the criminals are, and establishing how they interact with each other. The action really starts about halfway through the movie, when the kidnappers finally arrive at the scene. And even then, it spends a little too much time with Kyle waffling about whether he’s going to go save his friends or not.
But after that, the film really picks up. It still isn’t brilliant by any means, or even particularly well made. But solid production values, a beautiful setting, and some well-constructed action sequences combine to make the film a little more than one might expect. Following the lengthy, weirdly languid setup, the last third of this film is stunningly energetic and surprisingly brutal. There isn’t really much more to it than getting to see some young people get all crazy survivalist guerilla on a bunch of criminals, but sometimes that might be exactly what you’re looking for.
It’s easy enough to identify where the film could have improved. There are a few too many characters, few of which are given any personality beyond a broad signifier. In a couple of cases, the signifier is pretty much just his or her race, which takes the film into pretty iffy territory at times. And there are a couple of twists near the end that feel like genre obligation more than anything else. The film is unable to make these reversals matter, and it feels like it just threw them in for the sake of having some sort of twist.
Director Joe Gillespie is a veteran of the B-movie, and the film looks a lot better than it really has any right to be. The setting is really great, and the film takes every opportunity to really exploit the wonderful wilderness at their disposal. Jeremy Sumpter isn’t great in the lead role, the actor never quite able to edge the character into sympathetic territory. But he works well enough. Phoebe Tonkin makes a bit of an impression here. And Elliot Knight is able to take advantage of one of the few meaty roles in the script.
Take Down is still not great, but it makes a better case for big screen viewing than a lot of other action films we get in our cinemas. It is, at least, reasonably cinematic. It has a really beautiful setting, and the direction actually takes advantage of it. The action sequences, though clearly limited, are fairly entertainment. There are a lot of caveats here, but on the whole this isn’t a film that’s worth regretting. It’s certainly something that can fill up some time.
My Rating:
