De Heineken ontvoering

Well done for bringing these talents together. Rem annex Holleeder is a great invention and makes the movie worth seeing. I also liked Heinekens wife a lot. What is great that the film also brings some humor to it. Before the premiere I was a bit skeptical but it worked out really well. I loved all the scenery. Great locations. I waited almost 30 years for this film. It was worth waiting for it. I think it must have been difficult to leave some details out. Something I was surprised of is that they put emphasis on Heineken personal life. They literally brought two worlds (gangsters and Heineken) together in their private world, which makes it interesting and not to factual.

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.

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.

This was a film I came to in a very circuitous route. There was a wonderful piece in The New Yorker in August 2018 entitled "How a Notorious Gangster was Exposed by His Own Sister" by Patrick Radden Keefe. It was about the events leading up to what was the biggest court case at the time and one that had the attention of all of the Netherlands. The article was so well written and interesting that I picked up Astrid Holleeder's book Judas while in Aruba (the translation to English is disappointing as it would have done better to have the story told by an actual writer/storyteller vs. Astrid herself. Also, Astrid seems to have no remorse for living off of the money begot from crime...making her a very unsympathetic character.) After reading the book and feeling very let down, particularly about details of the Heineken kidnapping, I sought out this film to watch.

Rutger Hauer does an excellent job playing the esteemed businessman Heineken, he had just the right amount of smart savvy that exposed the "criminal masterminds" for what they were...crazy and poorly coordinated. It is sad when there is so much work put in to ill begotten gains.

Decently told kidnapping story, worth watching, based on the real-life kidnapping of Freddie Heineken that was masterminded by the infamous Dutch gangster known as "De Neus".

For a dutch film, this is a must see. The aging icon of dutch cinema, rutger hauer, gives another solid performance. This movie was pretty good n all, but still some things wrong with it, mostly the pacing... acting,scripting, suspense building, all top notch. The cinematography is good,and the music makes a good atmosphere. But from time to time i was still looking at my watch... scenes are drawn out too long and the interesting bits are unfortunately, infrequent. Overall a decent attempt with a good outcome of a film.

Enjoy -

The_evil_fred