It’s strange to think it has taken so long for this story to make it to the big screen, but it’s finally here in the form of Kidnapping Freddy Heineken, which follows the true story of the notorious kidnapping of businessman Alfred Heineken, the heir to the Heineken brewing company and his captors holding him for (at the time) the highest ransom fee in history.
Jim Sturgess, Sam Worthington, Ryan Kwanten and Mark van Eeuwen star in the film as childhood friends who devise a get-rich-quick scheme to kidnap and hold to random business giant Alfred ‘Freddy’ Heineken played wonderfully (but unfortunately features sparingly) by Anthony Hopkins. The down-on-their-luck petty criminals and contractors come up with the insane scheme when they have nothing left to gamble with in life besides their liberty, as said by Strugess’ character, Cor Van Hout. The passionate speech is enough to influence the group of friends to follow Cor’s leadership and bet everything on something that could change their lives forever, for better or worse.
There are many things wrong with Kidnapping Freddy Heineken. First and foremost, the story gets British/Americanised. For a Dutch story I would at the very least expect the none-Dutch actors to speak English with a Dutch accent, and in an ideal world it wouldn’t hurt to hire Dutch actors (only one is present in the film). Instead we find our leads extremely British and American and Australian. I’ve personally never liked this kind of approach as it feels like lazy filmmaking at its worst. And what’s worse is the film wastes its stellar cast of Strugess, Worthington and Kwanten. And even more so their main attraction of Hopkins, who gets fleeting screentime. It’s not to say their performances aren’t good, they are, but at the same time the story bitterly under-uses the cast, almost tries to hero-ise the kidnappers and simply ignores what Hopkins has to offer in his arsenal.
The story is predictable which isn’t necessarily a bad thing and can be at times quite entertaining. The opening 10 minutes almost feels like a completely different film with its much lighter approach and perhaps should have kept consistent with this and given it more of a Pain & Gain feel instead of a rather blandish 21 Hours at Munich. There are a couple of killer scenes including the adrenaline filled boat chase which really lift the film up.
I’m one of those people who upon watching a film based on true events likes to read about the real story and find out the fact from the fiction, and reading the history on the kidnapping, the planning, the aftermath, it’s hard to feel anything other than more could and should have been done with this film. It would have been the difference from something that is neither here nor there to something memorable, exciting and I dare say fun. All we seem left with instead is missed opportunity.
Want another opinion? Check out Chris’ review of the film here!
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