'Takers' tries to be 'Heat' but comes up cold

A dogged Los Angeles cop, an elusive criminal kingpin. Two men! A battle of wills!

The drama "Takers" blatantly burgles the Pacino-De Niro epic "Heat," but like most amateur thieves, it grabs only what's in plain sight - in this case, sleek suits and cool guns. Left sitting in the safe: valuables like story and character.

Matt Dillon plays the cop, Jack Welles, who becomes obsessed with solving a perfectly planned bank heist. Idris Elba plays the mastermind, Gordon, whose last name seems undecided: It's Crozier in the film, Jennings in the credits, Betts in the publicity material. Anyway, his natty crew includes John Rahway (Paul Walker), A.J. (Hayden Christensen) and brothers Jake (Michael Ealy) and Jesse (Chris Brown).

These dudes are supersmart, or so we're led to believe from their casual talk about "the markets" and "the Bloomberg report." (A portion of their loot even goes to "the usual charities.") Nevertheless, when a slippery ex-con named Ghost (an enjoyable Tip "T.I." Harris) approaches them with a rush job on an armored car, they fall for it quicker than one of Bernie Madoff's marks.

It all goes south, of course, as does the four-author script. As "Takers" careens toward its randomly chosen ending, it loses not only the plot but its moral bearings. The crooks, initially painted so glamorously, end up looking small and grasping. It's tough to root for murderers and turncoats, even ones who drink really good Scotch.