A good movie

Of course, since I live in the Netherlands, I heard about the hijacking in the Apple store in Amsterdam, it was some big news at the time so I have to admit that I was intrigued by this movie. On top of that, my daughter was quite eager to see it as well so we watched it together. To be honest, even though I keep trying with Dutch movies, most of them are actually pretty weak, even rather pathetic, but I have to admit that I was positively surprised by this one. Indeed, the directing was solid, I could feel the tension through the whole duration, and the acting was not bad either so it didn’t feel like watching a cheap made-for-TV feature like it is usually the case with many Dutch productions. Concerning the approach, they went for something rather raw and straightforward without digging too much in the lives of the characters involved which was fine by me. I also did appreciate the amount of details they went to describe how it all went down and the end-result was realistic and convincing. The only detail that did bother me was how they obviously toned down how the hostage taker was deliberately hit by a police car at the end. In this version, it seemed to be a controlled and measured action showing how level-headed the Dutch SWAT team was. However, I also watched a documentary about the same topic and, in this documentary, they gave us the actual footage and it looked so much more brutal, like a deliberate action to kill the guy on the spot. I remember it very well, my daughter and I were quite shocked by this footage which left us with quite a bitter taste. Indeed, it felt like they executed a poor confused and disturbed guy who was walking around with a fake bomb and who didn’t kill anyone after all. Apart from this detail, everything seemed to be pretty accurate though. Anyway, to conclude, it was a decent watch and I think it is worth a look, especially if you like the genre. 

7/10