The Takeover, a Dutch cyber crime thriller directed by Annemarie van de Mond, probes us to think about cyber safety and global data threats. It follows the story of a young ethical hacker who must succeed at two things simultaneously – proving her innocence and saving the world – while constantly being on the run. This gripping premise is paid lackluster attention to while all of it is divested in showing us the world of coding in this hit-and-miss Netflix thriller.
Every technological device we use in our day-to-day lives also comes with the threat of data theft. Our personal information is not safe anywhere, in digital notepads or pen-and-paper notebooks. How, then, can we feel secure while giving in to the radical technological advancements of our time? A television show that has time and again brought forward these concerns into the mainstream discussion is Black Mirror (2011 – ). The idea of any narrative dealing with the abuse of data and AI-powered technology is the searing threat lurking just around the corner of our lives, something we like to keep our backs carefully turned to. Mond’s directorial venture into this territory proves to be a superficial exploration of the same because it keeps a protagonist at the heart of the narrative and forgets to widen the periphery of its focus into larger problems around her.
There’s a lot of data that an ethical hacker deals with, so much that Mond chooses to frequently split the screen into horizontal halves so that we can look at Mel’s face and her computer running codes at the same time. If you are not familiar with how coding works, you will be left dazzled by the streams of data pouring out on the screen until it superimposes with Mel’s dead-pan serious working face like a Windows screensaver. In one scene, Mel (played by Holly Mae Brood) says that code never lies, forcing us to acknowledge the mathematical accuracies lying behind every action in this plot. However, Mel’s genius is left unexplained. The irony sabotages the logical framework that this plot tries to hinge upon.
The Takeover doesn’t so much make for a thrilling ride, but it is sure to keep your attention arrested. The plot is finely webbed, and we have made an attempt to untangle it for your better understanding below. It is currently streaming on Netflix, and we reckon you watch the film before you proceed any further. SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Takeover (2022) Plot Summary & Movie Synopsis:
The film opens with Buddy (played by Frank Lammers) being called to a military air base for detecting the cause of a regular blackout at 3 pm every day. He arrives at the spot and works his magic fingers on his computer to find the location of the person responsible for hacking into their system and breaching their privacy. It is astonishing when they find out a 16-year-old Mel Bandison working from her garage is the offender. She confesses to her actions, saying that she was hacking into the military operating system to switch off the jet noise that disturbs the seals in the ocean. Buddy, a renowned and professional techie, immediately spots the coding genius in her.
The next time we see Mel, ten years have passed. She is grown up and working as an ethical hacker. Her intentions are noble and Robin Hood-like to save the planet from the millionaires and their ecologically unsustainable agreements. She is called to spot a bug at Rotramax. This company is in the process of launching automated self-driving buses. She is quick to spot a data breach code and immediately sends in her signature trojan horse to stop the data leak. Afterward, she leaves for dinner with a guy she has met on an online dating platform, one that doesn’t live up to the mark. So Mel comes home only to realize that two men have broken into her house with guns. She is swift to flee the house and rush to the police station. But even the police seem to be in preparation of arresting her.
She manages to exit the police station and lands at Thomas’ house, who is confused about her panicky presence and interest in him after the previous night. Mel is about to explain herself when the bad guys following her arrive at the doorstep and start firing bullets. Thomas (played by Geza Weisz) and Mel leave using the backdoor. They realize that the reason the police are looking for Mel is video footage that shows Mel murdering a couple of guys in a parking lot. They escape the town and reach out for help to Buddy, Mel’s mentor and partner, who is also on the run from the police. He takes them to a safe house near the border, and the master hacker is quick to spot the connection.
A bigger conspiracy emerges in The Takeover, taking all three of them by surprise. Rotramax, the company Mel went to for fixing a bug in their system, works in collaboration with a famous Chinese multinational company, Xiau Ming, which, in turn, has several connections with other European companies. Xiau Ming, however, is using a data mining tool to steal all the data from the software codes of its partner companies to source them to the Chinese government. So, when Mel went to meet the CEO of Rotramax on the bus, it used technology to scan her face so that her facial data could be matched with the existing police and government records, an offering to keep the passengers on the new self-driven bus safe. But this data was enough to mine all of Mel’s, or any passenger’s, personal information. Because of Mel’s action, the Trojan Horse virus put an unexpected stoppage to their actions. Hence, the hackers were directly looking to seek revenge on her. Mel calls the head of police, Daoudi, to inform him about the privacy breach, but the bad guys (the hackers led by a guy named Rogers) have arrived at the spot.
Mel must return to the Rotramax headquarters and lay her hands upon the tampered video footage and her personal details to prove her innocence to the police. Thomas and her set out for Rotterdam, bidding a tearful goodbye to Buddy. She must prove her innocence and shoulder the responsibility of saving the common people of Rotterdam in the climax of this film, one towards which it rushes headlong in lightning speed.
Who is Buddy?
When we meet Buddy right at the start of The Takeover, he appears to be a technological expert and a hacker. He helps the Dutch military track down the 16-year-old Mel, who had hacked into the military’s system. From her apparent wonder and fascination towards him when she meets Buddy, it is evident that he must be a renowned name in the world of ethical hacking. Later in the story, we learn that Buddy and Mel were partners in ethical hacking who had recently fallen out. They aimed to take down immoral companies that wanted to profit from others’ losses. The money they stole in the process had been decided to be given away as charity to the ones in need of it. On one occasion, Mel found out that Buddy had kept the money for himself instead of donating it. This angered her, and she ended up reporting him to the police. Since then, Buddy had gone into hiding. However, when Mel calls him for help while on the run, he turns up in his car and takes Mel and Thomas into a safe house. Once there, Buddy helps them understand the connection between the morphed video of Mel going viral and the bad guys chasing after her. When the bad guys attack this place, Buddy helps Thomas and Mel run away while he succumbs to the enemy’s bullet.
In the final scenes, a previously-recorded video message from Buddy pops up on Mel’s laptop as a farewell message declaring his love for her. He confesses that the money he had kept away for himself was to build a proper working space with the requisite resources for Mel so that, in the future, she could keep up with her practice of ethical hacking. He was a father figure and mentor in Mel’s life till the end.
Why is Mel running from the police and the hackers?
When Mel approached the Rotramax company’s newly launched self-driven bus, it scanned her face using a facial recognition technology that belonged to its partner company Xiau Ming. This technology was implemented in the bus to help detect any passenger on board who could be a threat to public safety. However, the same technology had created a data leak in the code, helping all this public data trickle into the database of the company and ultimately to the coffers of the Chinese government.
Mel had spotted this bug in the system and left a Trojan Horse virus to stop this unwarranted data breach. This had put a pause on the partner company’s vested interests. Hence, the hackers working for Xiau Ming had used Mel’s facial imprint to morph a video of homicide. The police received this video and set out to arrest Mel for the crime. Besides, they had also employed two bad buys (criminals or hackers) under the leadership of a British man, Rogers, to personally track her down and avenge the loss they were suffering because of her actions. This is why the police and the bad guys were trying to track down Mel, who was on the run.
How does Thomas Deen help Mel in the movie?
Thomas Deen is a simpleton who barely has any idea about the complex world of coding or ethical hacking. It is evident from the unsophisticated eating etiquette that disenchants Mel on the night of their dinner date. However, Mel retraces her steps to his house when she is on the run from the bad guys. Deen, thereafter, becomes involved in this chase. He tells Mel, despite seeing the video being telecast, that he trusts her not to do something like that and helps her flee. He drives her back and forth from Rotterdam as they decide to meet Buddy, her fellow hacker. During the climax of The Takeover, he also riskily transfers himself from his car to the speeding Rotramax bus, following Mel’s instructions to grant her access to the bus’s server and stop it from a deadly accident. There is a hint of a romantic relationship developing between the two as they navigate this chase.
The Takeover Movie Ending, Explained:
How does Mel Prove that she is Innocent?
Mel is certain after meeting Buddy that the only way to prove her innocence is to go back to the Rotramax headquarters and fish out the video and her facial details from their server. On the way back to Rotterdam, she falls out with Thomas and leaves for the place on her own. It is the day the new automated bus is going to be launched. She enters the company’s server room when she is caught off-guard by Rogers, the man leading the bad guys after her. But Mel is smart. She quickly switches off the lights in the room and escapes from him. Rogers is fully aware that if Mel succeeds, his employing company will be ousted and incriminated. He decides to fire up the servers, but the police arrive on the scene and take Mel and Rogers into custody.
While Rogers is taken away, Mel asks the police chief, Daoudi, to give her one chance to prove herself. He escorts her to the server room so that she can gather the evidence. Once successful, she has another more important task at hand. In the fire that Rogers started, the internal servers lost connection with the bus servers. The bus – loaded with passengers, the CEO of the company, and some officials – out on its inauguratory ride has lost all control. It is speeding towards its predestined route without taking heed of any other vehicle or traffic signals coming it’s way. Mel must use her coding skills to stop the bus in its tracks and save the lives on board.
Mel and two of her hacker friends set about diagnosing the case while the bad guys from Xiau Ming create further obstacles in her path. They open up the Erasmus bridge, towards which the bus is headed, to destroy any existing camera footage of the bus. Mel uses her coding skills successfully to carry out the task with a little help from Thomas. She brings the malicious software and the truth of the data breach to police attention, saving the passengers on the bus and the general public of Rotterdam from data theft in the future.
The Takeover feels like a hastily concocted narrative that tries to tie together its loose ends and barely succeeds. It gives Mel a clean chit and hints at a blossoming romantic affair between her and Thomas in the end. The situation that Mel is thrust into in this narrative isn’t impossible in the scope of today’s technological advancements, and that’s the scary part of it all!
