The Heineken Kidnapping Reviews

Recently, Rugter Hauer, arguably the most famous Dutch movie star, has been coming back making some movies in the Netherlands and this must have been the most ambitious feature so far. Indeed, who other than Hauer could portray another Dutch icon like Alfred Heineken? So, the cast was quite brilliant and, of course, this movie was dealing with one of the most notorious real crime in Dutch history so they had the ingredients to make quite a great movie. Eventually, the end-result was pretty good but still not really mind-blowing, unfortunately. To start with, the directing was quite decent with a rather bombastic soundtrack which somehow reminded me of ‘Inception’. I don’t know, like I said before, it is quite a fascinating story which doesn’t deal only with the kidnapping of Heineken, of course with his detention but also with what happened after he was freed. Unfortunately, even though some bits were really well setup, some of the scenes were terribly murky and sometimes, the narration was pretty shaky. The fact that they added some terribly underwhelming subplots (his girlfriend who was also with another gang members and the fact that he has to get his driving license) involving Rem Hubrechts/ Willem Holleeder didn’t help either. Anyway, to conclude, even though it didn’t really reach its potential, I still think it is a decent crime feature and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you are interested in Dutch movies.