O Sequestro de Heineken

Rutger Hauer in great shape, as he has but a few lines, as Alfred Heineken bullied by a young criminal, who in fact build a scary career afterwards. Story well told, much better than the English remake. Heineken never fully recovered, not all the money was traced. More interesting, I admit, once you know what happend afterwards. Not every kidnapper managed to grow old. The young criminals sister, a lawyer, later wrote a book on him, that shocked the a Dutch readers. On basis of her testimony, incl recorded phone calls, he was convicted. With Hauer on screen, there' s a strange effect, he draws your attention, even when he is silent. Sad he is no longer among us.

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 :)

Rem Hubrechts' family is struggling after the Heineken plant closing. He blames his father's deteriorating health on the company. After a run-in with Freddy Heineken (Rutger Hauer), he recruits his brother-in-law Cor van Hout with his friends to execute their kidnapping plans on the brewery tycoon. The second half of the movie chronicles their escape after getting the ransom. Freddy hounds the four kidnappers across the globe.

The movie is altered from the true story. Rem's story is too convenient. His personality change is jarring. It's relying too much on his hatred as a reason. The way to make it work is to have an underlying personality flaw for Rem. The second half could have been more compelling if Rutger Hauer's powerful persona is released. He's turned into a wimp and it's not as compelling. There is a lack of intensity due to the pacing. The real story has good potential but this is unable to harness it fully.

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.

Having watched the American version of the same incident, it is tough to say which one you should prefer. Obviously both have their limitations, but also strong points. It's the same story, but the weight lies on different things with those movies. While this feels more like a cold, going through what happened movie, the American version was a bit flashier.

This also relies even more on Heineken himself (the character/personal life) and the aftermath, which was handled fairly quickly in the US version. So both can be watched under different aspects and sort of work as companion pieces.