SYNOPSICS
Take (2008) is a English movie. Eric Bay-Andersen has directed this movie. Eric Bay-Andersen,Yasha Shrimpton,Joshua David Hall,Esben Bay-Andersen are the starring of this movie. It was released in 2008. Take (2008) is considered one of the best Comedy,Drama movie in India and around the world.
Coming home on the train the morning after graduation, Jim Swanson meets Mary - the girl he liked from university. He invites her back to his place where they are shocked to find somebody already in the house. The intruder runs off and Jim pursues him in his dad's car. He finds him and runs him over - only then does he discover that the intruder is Jeff, his slacker best friend from university. Throughout the rest of the morning they wait for a taxi to take Jeff to the hospital and on the way they talk about university, girls and movies until they finally get to the root of the problems that have plagued their friendship for years.
More
![Taken - Trailer 2 [30 January 2009] HQ](http://i4.ytimg.com/vi/CvUxdQ4q-Lg/mqdefault.jpg "Taken - Trailer 2 [30 January 2009] HQ")
Take (2008) Reviews
A great low-budget black comedy / buddy movie with some incredible long shots
I did a film course with Eric, the writer/director a year and a bit ago (the course mentioned in the trivia. I recommend it to all budding film-makers who live in or around London - Elliot really knows his stuff) and when he made this film he sent me a DVD and asked me what I thought. Considering this film was made for practically NOTHING - no real crew, using friends as actors, filming on the streets early in the morning - I was impressed. I loved the initial premise of an hour of real-time where two friends reconcile their differences after a couple of farcical misunderstandings. It's a shame that the whole movie wasn't one take (as originally intended) but the long shots - as they are - were pretty incredible, I thought. The first shot, for example, goes from a train to a train station, into the street, to a house about half a mile away, upstairs, downstairs, outside again and into a car - an amazingly organised set-up if you ask me. And the last five minutes, where they get the car back by stealing another one to go after it, was brilliantly executed - and genuinely surprising (I expected it to end on the bridge after they'd forgiven each other). However, the film's greatest strength is it's dialogue. When you have dialogue that's full of pop culture referencing, it's easy to slip into wannabe-Tarantino territory, but (in the taxi scene, specifically) it genuinely felt like two friends who love films just having a chat (their comments about Spider-man 3 and James Bond were hilarious!) And I thought the backstory was really well-woven in amongst all the film talk. By the end you really felt like you had spent an hour in the company of two friends as they've fought and made up, and gotten to know them as well. The fact that the cast were friends in real life helped make the performances naturalistic. I understand what the other user said about losing respect about for the characters after they steal the car at the end, but then again, Jim did run Jeff over and Jeff did break into Jim's house - that was okay, but stealing a car is wrong? I thought it was hilarious - It is a black comedy after all, so you kind of have to just go with it. Jeff didn't force Jim to steal it out of maliciousness - he just wanted to make things right for his friend. Aw, bless him(!) The film's main flaws / weaknesses: admittedly, some of the dialogue scenes go on a little bit too long, like the first one where Jim and Mary are walking home, and when Jim and Jeff are waiting for the taxi. The dialogue is still good, but it's like we're marking time waiting for the next plot point. Also, there are times when a steadicam would have really come in handy. Overall, the cameraman did a good job, but in the scenes where he's walking backwards the shakiness is distracting (I only saw it on DVD, so I can't imagine how it would look on the big screen). Sound is another issue in the street scenes - the dubbing is mostly well-matched, but the mixing with the street noise makes it obvious. A shame. However, If this is what he can do with practically no resources, I love to see what he could achieve with a proper crew and budget. Hopefully we won't have to wait too long to find out - well done mate!
Were we watching the same film?
I'm sorry to say this but regardless of budget this isn't a good film. At best 'Take' is so bad it's good. At worst, it's a self indulgent, seemingly never ending insight into a boring man and his offensive friend. Fundamentally the characters (Jim and Jeff?!) aren't sufficiently likable for the audience to overlook how mundane their conversations are. Yes, shooting long transitional shots in one is certainly impressive, but the dialogue, acting and plot are fairly important aspects too! The film watches like a first draft and there sadly isn't any comedic content. The conversations in the cab are a perfect example of the film's dialogue: a lot of forum style film commenting with no particularly original insight, a brilliantly offensive reference to 9/11 and then a sexist joke (?) about Breakfast at Tiffany's true message being 'it takes a hell of a long time to get a pussy wet'. Jeff the character who utters this unbelievable line could have potentially got away with it being a bad joke, were he not quite so offensive / aggressive all the way through. For example when Jeff carjacks the old woman he calls her a C***T. Twenty seconds later the audience is however expected to find him an endearingly amusing character and care about his and Jim's, Dawson's Creek-esquire issues. The film isn't funny but that would be fine if its plot was justifiable under another genre, as a drama or even a coming of age style short. Sadly however 'Take' suffers throughout from a weak and poorly structured plot. The film doesn't seem to know what it is and as a result it's a bit of a wreck. If the film had been longer and crucially better structured the audience would have had more time to work out the characters of the two male leads. However at just over an hour there was little explanation for their often bizarre actions. The guys bounce between being self involved geeks or gun (albeit toy) toting criminals. I still don't understand how Jim fails to recognise the burglar is his best friend, nor why he thought it a proportionate response to run over the burglar, stranger or not. Then there are the conversations between Jeff and Jim regarding finishing study and some obscenely cliché 'ooh in the bar instead' style anecdotes which just don't make sense in light of the fact that the characters commit serious and imprisonable offences throughout the film. I was also left wondering if the writer of 'Take' knows anyone female at all. While I'm sure he must do, his only female character is so one-dimensional the film is somehow weaker as a result of her inclusion. In future if the writer continues to demonstrate this inability to write for female characters, then can he please have someone with two X chromosomes read over and edit them to stop the dialogue being quite so flat and screaming 'male writer'. Sadly any other references to women or sex throughout the film are either misogynistic or plain bizarre. 'Sex without feeling is like exercise or violence' presenting a particularly disturbing insight into one character's thought process. Furthermore the film this line is loosely taken from revolves around an alleged rape and as such makes no sense in the context of 'Take'. It is also lines like this one which prevent the audience from liking the characters as examples of the 'everyman'. I think this was what the writer was going for and in limited places it does work but sadly many references are often too narrow (the conversation about graduation for example) and unlike Clerks or Pineapple Express the two male characters are losers without the lovable. I assume this is the first script the writer has penned and as a result there are fundamental but understandable flaws in it. It isn't all bad and I hope that these criticisms are constructive, which honestly is all I intend them to be. Keep going but I do think 'Take' needs to be seen as the bottom of what will hopefully be a very steep learning curve.
Not without flaws, but an interesting and mostly successful first effort.
I'm a sucker for real time movies, and movies with long takes, and I came across the trailer for this whilst searching for videos on YouTube. The tagline 'should running you over affect our friendship?' tickled me a bit. A quick look on the director's website led to this page where I was able to watch the film in it's entirety. 'Take' is a very interesting debut, given the fact that it wasn't made with any studio backing or financing - the whole thing was essentially made by three kids (and I don't mean that in a derogatory sense) with a camcorder. The writer/director Eric Bay-Anderson has done a bit of a Robert Rodriguez and made an ultra low-budget film almost all by himself - as well as writing, directing and producing it, he plays one of the main roles and also composed the music (which is very good). He's quite good as Jim, an uptight film geek desperately trying to impress a girl, but the standout actor is the one who plays Jeff - a lovable scallywag and a bit of a slacker. The two bounce off each other very well, and they make the amusing and occasionally-contrived dialogue appear natural. The movie's limited resources work both for and against it - i.e. the shaky camera provides some realism yet it's sometimes distracting, the black and white looks a bit film-school but in some scenes it looks wonderful (like when Jim is driving around looking for Jeff). I don't know whether the long takes were done as a gimmick or out of necessity, but they are pretty impressive - some of the dialogue scenes are about 10 minutes long! The only one that I felt was too long was the first one with the girl - but, again, the locations chosen probably dictated that. I'm glad they didn't try and make the film any longer than they did. However, the best thing about 'Take' is that it's genuinely surprising. If you saw it without any prior knowledge of it, before Jeff turns up you'd be forgiven for thinking this was a Before Sunrise-esquire teen romance (perhaps the long introduction is meant to mislead that way). I also didn't expect for Jim to get his car stolen (although a re-watch of the trailer makes it more obvious), and the ending is very unexpected and funny. An amusing and interesting little film - I'm intrigued what the two leads will do next.
Great! considering there was probably no money involved.
I saw this film here on IMDb two days ago and i honestly think that considering that there was no money involved it was brilliant. If there was a budget then i would completely retract that statement. If there was any bad things about it at all it was the camera-work was a bit shaky, maybe you guys should've got something stable to put it on and i thought SOME of the dialogue was kinda amateurish and cheesy, like i mean considering its set in Britain there seems to be way too much copying of "clerks"- esquire dialogue and its as if its trying too hard in places. I thought the beginning was only KIND OF boring up until the Jeff character arrives (by the way that Joshua David Hall guy is he like a real actor? because his performance was what kept it going in a way) i thought the way the one take shots was done was fantastic, so well done to Ben Arnold as he is credited, it was wonderful the way he is never seen in the movie with the amount of one takes, apart from the shakiness at the beginning which was maybe unavoidable his camera-work is great for a debut. All in all well done to Eric bay Andersen (who also acts very naturally) for a great first effort, if this is these guys FIRST then i hope to see more from them. It seems to be a good trio for filmaking.
a three-take "take"
I liked the original idea of "Take". I expected, early on, that the entire film would truly be shot in one continuous take, and as it turns out, there were a few cuts in it (three, I think). My thought was, if you're gonna cut at all, just make it into a standard film, with multiple shots, and edits, since you're not doing it in one take anyway. The story was interesting, but certain scenes were way too long (the cab ride, and the early section where main character and the girl he runs into at the train station walk), but that's the drawback of limiting yourself to no editing/cuts. I was also confused by the characters' motivation/intent on trying to get their car back, only to end up stealing another car as a result. To me, this puts the characters in the category of caricatures; if you're stealing, you don't deserve to get your car back - that sorta thing. I lost respect for them completely there at the end, when I don't think that's what the filmmaker(s)' wanted me to feel. Not bad for a first feature - I suspect (and expect) that the second effort will be better.