Change Your Image
BvH_NL
Reviews
Celda 211 (2009)
A decent prison movie
Cell 211 is a movie about a soon to be prison guard named Juan who becomes trapped inside a prison when a riot breaks out. He lies about his real identity and soon becomes best friends with the prisons tough guy.
The movie is full with clichés and is often too far fetched. Juan seems to know everything and says all the right things at the right time, which becomes really annoying at one point. His girlfriend is pregnant (extra drama), and her parts in the movie are just horrible. Why the F does a pregnant girl attend a demonstration? And of course she gets hit, and of course it's one of the guards that beats her and of course this gets taped with his face clearly shown, and of course one of the prisoners gets this video on a mobile phone and shows this to Juan. I mean jeez...
I could go on, there are many other situation which are so bad, so I was really surprised to see that this movie got a 7,6 rating (at the time of writing this). Oke it's not all bad, Juan's acting was pretty good and some parts were really suspenseful. I liked the first part were it was dubious if the prisoners would believe Juan's story - which was a turning point in the movie.
Although I like prison movies, this is a very forgettable one and I would not recommend it to my friends. Too bad, I went in with high expectations (maybe this was the problem).
De Heineken ontvoering (2011)
A mixture of "Amsterdamish" humor and action
First of all, in Holland there was much controversy around this movie. Crime-journalist Peter R. de Vries - author of the book "De Heineken Ontvoering" - did not sell the rights of his non-fictive story to director Maarten Treurniet and was criticizing that the movie was too fictional. Also criminal Willem Holleeder (Rem Hubrechts in the movie) who is currently serving a nine year sentence for extortion and involvement in the murder of a Yugoslav drugs-dealer filed a law suit against Maarten Treurniet for portraying him as a "maniac" in the movie. The law suit he evidently lost.
This served great as free promotion for the movie and the cinema was packed when I entered.
I must say, I was not disappointed at all. The acting is really good - except for Heineken's wife played by Truus te Selle who was not convincing and overacted at times. The two standouts were Rutger Hauer (Heineken) and Reinout Scholten van Aschat (Rem Humbrechts / Holleeder). They both delivered stunning performances and doing so carried the movie.
Not all positive though. Some scenes could have been much better, the "terror" caused by Humbrechts to Heineken was not well done.. Also it felt like it missed some scenes - the chauffeur of Heineken who was also held captive was hardly in the movie. And the way the police solved the kidnapping was not clear to me which is pretty crucial. Tracing down of the kidnappers felt a little bit rushed especially that of Jan Boelaard and Frans Meijer.
Said all that.. The movie was really fun to watch, especially the acting performances and the mixture of typical "Amsterdamish" humor with some good action. I'd recommend it to anyone (above 14 y/o orso) and it continues the positive trend of dutch quality movies.
I'd give it an overall rating of 7,2.