Alfred
Henry “Freddy” Heineken was sort of like the Netherlands’ Lindbergh Baby,
except he was nobody’s victim. A desperate group of disenfranchised construction
workers pulled off the truly daring abduction, but getting away clean turned
out to be a trickier proposition. Nevertheless, their crime-of-the-century had
considerable long term consequences that are duly revealed in Daniel Alfredson’s
Kidnapping Mr. Heineken (trailer here), which opens this
Friday.
Frankly,
if Holland in the early 1980s had better respected property rights, Cor van
Hout and his business partners might have never resorted to crime. They
desperately needed a loan to keep their small construction enterprise afloat,
but their only collateral was a building infested with legally protected squatters—not
exactly a property the bank would be happy to assume should they default.
Ironically, old man Heineken, a supporter of the Dutch People’s Party for
Freedom and Democracy, probably would have empathized. Regardless, when Van
Hout and his hot-tempered mate Willem Holleeder resolve to follow Willie Sutton’s
advice and go where the money is, it necessarily means Mr. Heineken.
Showing
considerable patience, Van Hout, Holleeder, and their accomplices spend two years
in planning, rather than rushing into the operation. They want the authorities
to assume Heineken was grabbed by a well-funded international terrorist
organization or the mob. Initially, it all goes according to plan, but old man
Heineken is cool customer. His chauffeur Ab Doderer is a different story.
Heineken tries to reassure his panicking employee through the walls of their
makeshift cells, but the working class immigrant is not holding up well.
You
can expect to see a lot of negative reviews of Mr. Heineken from those hung up on class warfare rhetoric because
of its largely positive portrayal of Freddy Heineken. He is consistently calm,
collected, and caring with respects to poor Doderer. It is also rich to learn
how he responded to his kidnapping as a capitalist once he was released (no
thanks to his captors).
In
large measure, Mr. Heineken is the
sort of caper film where the whole point is to watch it go spectacularly wrong.
Getting the ransom is the easy part, as it usually is. The getaway is way more
difficult. However, in this case, the endgame is especially long and twisty.
Screenwriter
William Brookfield incorporates a number of fascinating historical details into
the narrative and the mostly British Commonwealth cast looks appropriately continental
and suitably beaten down where applicable. Of course, Sir Anthony Hopkins is
totally credible as Freddy Heineken, instantly establishing his intelligence
and charisma. Jim Sturgess does his best work in years as the angsty Van Hout,
while Sam Worthington is reliably tightly wound as Holleeder (but not nearly as
awesome-nuts as he was in the under-rated Texas Killing Fields).
