Denzel Washington is a master thief, Robert Pattinson is his new recruit, and the target is the richest bank in Manhattan. Netflix has released the first images from The Take, a heist thriller that opens in select theaters and starts streaming on Netflix on January 15.
The catch that drives the plot: the bank teller on duty is the recruit’s girlfriend, played by Daisy Edgar-Jones.
The setup
Netflix’s official synopsis lays out the triangle. Pattinson plays Noah, a former Army captain struggling to settle into civilian life. Washington plays Christian Carter, a charming career criminal who pulls Noah onto his crew for one huge score. Edgar-Jones plays Rose, Noah’s girlfriend, who happens to work the counter at the bank they plan to hit. The streamer’s own one-line pitch frames it as a bank guard, a teller and a master thief caught in a lethal game of cons and double-crosses.
Fernando Meirelles, the Oscar-nominated director of City of God and The Two Popes, is behind the camera. Simon Kinberg, who wrote Mr. & Mrs. Smith, wrote the script. The film was previously known as Here Comes the Flood; Netflix’s original announcement page now redirects to the new title.
What the director says
Meirelles told Netflix’s Tudum that he was drawn in by a script that refuses to pick a lane. “Until the end, you don’t know if you’re making a love story that has a robbery, or if you’re making a robbery film that has a love story,” he said. “Both things have a lot of weight.”
He also stressed that the whole story stays locked to Noah’s point of view. “You only know what he knows,” Meirelles explained. That is an unusual choice for the genre, where the fun usually comes from watching every crew member’s piece of the plan click into place.
On his stars, he was generous. Of Pattinson: “He’s never late, he’s always available. If I need to do 20 takes, he’s there.” Of Washington’s habit of improvising: “Each take is a surprise.” And on adapting to Edgar-Jones’s take on Rose, he described himself this way: “I’m kind of a jazz director.”
The full cast
- Denzel Washington as Christian Carter
- Robert Pattinson as Noah
- Daisy Edgar-Jones as Rose
- Danai Gurira, Sean Harris, Moisés Arias and Justin Kirk in supporting roles
Meirelles produces alongside Kinberg and Audrey Chon for Genre Films, with Samson Mucke as an executive producer.
Why this one stands out
A single-perspective heist movie lives or dies on the actor carrying it, and Netflix has put that weight on Pattinson rather than on Washington, the bigger name. It is a reversal of the usual mentor-and-protégé math, and the director’s quotes suggest he cast it that way on purpose. Washington, meanwhile, has a crowded slate: Badiyaa covered his reported Christopher McQuarrie thriller on November 3.
Counting from today, November 10, fans have 66 days to wait. The Take arrives in select theaters and on Netflix on January 15.
Further reading
Image: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons
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