‘Kidnapping Freddy Heineken’ Trailer: Do Not Fuck With Anthony Hopkins

By  · Published on May 12th, 2014

Orion Pictures

Kidnapping Freddy Heineken’s plot is right there in the title, but as the trailer reveals, there’s a lot more going on under the surface of this simple heist film.

Now, if the real-life story of a beer baron’s grandson being kidnapped and ransomed for a large sum of money sounds like a silly concept for a movie, just think of how ridiculous a movie based on a federal agent faking a sci-fi movie in Iran to pull out hostages would be.

Also consider that the powerful target of the person theft is played by Anthony Hopkins, and it looks as if director Daniel Alfredson told Hopkins to renew his role as Hannibal Lecter because he continuously prods his kidnappers with unmitigated bravado.

Check out the trailer for yourself:

Obviously there’s a lot to love there. Complexity, a little ultraviolence and the pedigree of the filmmaker who brought us the first two Dragon Tattoo adaptations.

And if that’s not enough to get you to theaters, the raw power of Jim Sturgess’s mustache should do it. He hasn’t rocked something that bold since Cloud Atlas. I assume that he holds up a bank at the beginning of the movie with the hair over his lip alone.

Jokes aside, this looks fantastic. Granted, it’s all boilerplate in the trailer, but Alfredson earns more than a bit of trust for twisting brains (both his characters’ and ours) during a standard-seeming mystery. Hopefully we won’t actually have to wait until next year to see it.

Movie stuff at VanityFair, Thrillist, IndieWire, Film School Rejects, and The Broken Projector Podcast@brokenprojector | Writing short stories at Adventitious.