Let's be realistic.

Disapointment

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

A charming pickpocket, a CIA agent with unorthodox practices and a bunch of villains who can mysteriously infiltrate swat teams pretty much tell what the movie is all about. The one dimensional, dispassionate, taciturn antihero character initially looked funny with Arny starring in Terminator movies and alike. However, when others (Van Damme, Rock, etc.) started to mimic the same wooden acting style, they looked and became outright boring. In this cheesy action movie, the "cool", disinterested acting of Idris Elba evokes the same bad feelings. The plot is so predictable that the pace of the unfolding events always lags behind your guess. This is an action movie that I fell asleep in the last 20 min. or so. The only good thing about it is some nice Paris scenes in the background.

This is at best a 4/10 straight to TV movie so only watch if you have nothing else in mind. It's not deserving of its IMDB 6.3 score in the slightest and surely must have been manipulated or voted up by the Idris Elba fan club At the half way mark you will question whether to stop the movie or see it through. The acting, plot and production all got significantly worse as the movie progressed and even the end credits are no respite from Idris Elba's terribleness as he offers an ear murdering croak of a spoken word song that to be fair does reward the viewer with confirmation that this is truly an awful movie. Idris you can do better than risk your career leading such a weak script with laughable dialogue and by a writer/director with so little experience which is largely from a few tv shows. If this is what now stands for a 6/10 from IMDB I'm raising my bar to never watching anything under a 7.

There isn't much of anything to this movie, other than a lot of fast action, with the usual "collateral damage." Idris Elba is an actual actor, but he has no material to act with here. So, for that matter, is Thierry Godard, one of the leads in the French TV series Un Village français, but here he gets nothing at all.Every now and then there are allusions to current politics in French - the National Front, etc. - but they don't go anywhere, and are not explained.Not much is done with the Paris setting. No pleasant scenes in the Eiffel Tower restaurants, or along the banks of the Seine, etc.There is no point in summarizing the plot, such as it is, because it's not very interesting. Suffice it to say that, when all is said and done, this is actually about an impossible bank holdup.If you decide to watch this movie - and I can't imagine why you would - watch it late at night when your mind has shut down and doesn't catch all the holes in the plot.

"The Take" (also known as "Bastille Day") is a solid thriller with creative action sequences and a stellar set of three characters.Idris Elba plays the role of Briar, a maverick CIA agent attempting to thwart terrorists on the loose in Paris. He links up with two civilians who assist him in holding off a terrorist plot on Bastille Day, France's celebration of independence in 1789.The two civilians are an American pickpocket played with deadpan humor by Richard Madden. A mousy Frenchwoman named Zoe (Charlotte Le Bon) also assists with inciting a mob at a crucial moment in the film.At the heart of the narrative is a plot by a group of rogue policemen, who plant a bomb, then falsely attribute the explosion to the members of a local mosque. The police conspirators go all the way to the top of the administration. The objective of their terrorist acts is not political; rather, their goal is an enormous heist of the French treasury! It is interesting that much of stock footage of Paris focused on churches, including the basilica of Sacre Coeur and the Gothic cathedral of Notre Dame. Indeed, the denouement of the film occurs inside a church. It was not clear what statement, if any, the filmmakers were intending with so much emphasis placed on the church.The action culminates in the modern equivalent of the original attack on the Bastille fortress, but, in this case, Zoe leads the crowd in attacking the national treasury in order to stop the police! In the bonus segment of the DVD, actors Idris Elba and Richard Madden discussed how they relished in playing these roles. The banter of the two characters and an amazing chase scene on top of the buildings of Paris make this action film one of the finer thrillers of 2016.