The Takeover is a non-stop action thriller about a hacker. It stars an excellent Holly Mae Brood as the hacker who gets herself in a whole mess of trouble with both the bad guys and the police. The film is from The Netherlands and is mostly in Dutch.
The Takeover was directed by Annemarie van de Mond, who should direct dozens more action movies if there is any justice in the world.
We first meet Mel (Holly Mae Brood) when she’s 16 years old. She hacks into the air force. They bring in an older hacker, Buddy Benschot (Frank Lammers), and he figures out who she is.
Fast forward 10 years. Mel works with a small group of hackers who do good in the world. Stop polluters. Bring justice. Mel discovers that a self-driving bus group is actually stealing data from riders and sending it to a bunch of baddies in China. When she shuts that down, all hell breaks loose.
A deep fake video showing Mel shooting someone is released, so the police want her. She wants to prove it isn’t her.
Additionally, a bunch of men she doesn’t know want to grab her. They come with guns drawn. They are connected to the bus that steals data.
She runs (she runs a lot in this movie) and ends up at the house of her bad date from the night before, Thomas (Geza Weisz). They barely know each other, but when people start shooting at them they run together.
To prove her innocence Mel has to reconnect with her former mentor, Buddy. He will help her with the deep fake video. She has to hide out from the police and the bad guys chasing her while she hacks this and that to figure things out. She and Thomas stick together through all of this.
Holly Mae Brood was terrific as the brilliant hacker. She’s appeared in both Dutch language and English language film and TV series previously.
The film was nonstop excitement and energy. I enjoyed every second of it. It’s on Netflix. Here’s the trailer.