Takers is a 2010 crime/action movie starring Idris Elba, Matt Dillon, Paul Walker, Michael Ealy, Hayden Christensen, Chris Brown and Zoe Saldaña. A crew of criminals led by Gordon Cozier (Elba) pull off a successful Los Angeles bank heist in broad daylight. Before they can enjoy the money, "Ghost" (T.I.), a former member who got caught in a job and gets out of prison after five years. He tells them he got info from Russian mobsters about an armored car carrying 20 million dollars. Even though Ghost didn't rat them out while in jail, the others are not sure they can trust him. Meanwhile, a pair of detectives (Dillon and Hernandez) investigating the first robbery, are hot on their trail.
Takers provides examples of the following tropes:
- Anyone Can Die: Only two of the six characters in the poster live to the end of the film, one of whom probably died offscreen after getting shot a few times.
- Badass in a Nice Suit: The whole crew.
- Book Ends: The first and last exchange between Cozier and Rahway are exactly the same, albeit the lines are switched the second time around.
- Broomstick Quarterstaff: When the crooks he is buying the plastic explosive off try to double cross him and take the money, AJ grabs a broom to defend himself and beats the crap out them.
- Car Cushion: After killing Hatch, Jesse escapes by running along a ledge on the outside of the Monroe Building. He leaps from the ledge onto the rooftop car park of the lower building next door: landing on a car to break his fall.
- Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: Ghost betrays every single person he works with for the heist and ends up manipulating a majority of them into getting killed.
- Cool Bike: Jesse.
- Cowboy Cop: Welles. Even when it completely destroys his family life, he continues to hound the crew.
- Dirty Cop: "Hatch" is caught on video letting a suspect go and stealing drug money in order to pay his mortgage and his son's medical bills.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Gordon Cozier cares deeply for his sister Naomi, even though she complicates things for him due to her drug addictions.
- Evil Brit: Gordon Cozier.
- From Bad to Worse: After Eddie gets shot and killed, everything spirals out of control for all the main characters.
- "Hey, You!" Haymaker: Rahway does this to a guard during the armored car robbery.
- Kick the Dog: Even if she did cheat on him, Ghost had absolutely no reason for killing Lilly and leaving her corpse for Jake to find.
- Kick Them While They Are Down: During the drug bust at the start of the film, after tackling the Haitian. Det. Welles handcuffs him to the stair railing and then kicks him a couple of times in the ribs. this act comes back to haunt him later when he thinks Internal Affairs is after him for Police Brutality.
- Kill the Cutie: Lilly.
- Kitchen Chase: During the lengthy foot chase, Welles and Hatch pursue Jesse through the restaurant kitchen in the Munroe Building. This is where Hatch is shot and killed.
- Le Parkour: Chris Brown demonstrates this in a long foot chase from the cops through downtown Los Angeles.
- Plethora of Mistakes: Mistake number one: let the member of the team that was sent to prison (and may be holding a grudge on you because you left him behind) provide the idea and intel for the heist (which he says he got from The Mafiya). After that, everything's elementary.
- Manipulative Bastard: Ghost.
- Mexican Standoff: At the end between Gordon, Ghost and Welles.
- Redemption Equals Death: Invoked with Eddie, who lets Jesse kill him so he'll go down as a cop who was killed in the line of duty, as opposed to a Dirty Cop who got sent to prison for stealing drug money.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Justified with A.J. He had already been wounded by a shotgun and probably would've bled out anyway, so he sacrificed himself to try and take out the attacking Russians. He fails.
- Shout-Out: The heist that Ghost plans is very similar to the one from The Italian Job (2003). This actually gets lampshaded In-Universe... and pulling it off is the moment that the Plethora of Mistakes (accidental or engineered by Ghost to kill everybody and let him escape with the money) goes From Bad to Worse.
- Suicide by Cop:
- Inverted with Eddie, who forces Jesse to shoot and kill him after it was revealed that he was a Dirty Cop.
- Played straight with Jesse and Jake, who charge into a crowd of policemen carrying shotguns and are immediately cut down.
- Title Drop: Idris Elba improvised the line that became the title.Gordon: We're takers, gents. That's what we do for a living. We take.
- Two-Person Pool Party: While celebrating the Fed Cal heist, Rahway goes Skinny Dipping with a pair of naked women and it immediately turns sexual.
- Unflinching Walk: After the opening heist, the crew casually walk away from a stolen helicopter that they set to explode.
