On Tuesday 22 February 2022 a man walks into the Apple Store in Amsterdam trying to take the entire store hostage. The man, completely disappointed by society, requests a gigantic amount of crypto currency and a get-away. This film is based on those events.
What Boermans did well was giving context to the whole event. All but one of the hostages managed to get away from the gun-waving captor. In the first scenes of the film, we get to know this man a little. Also interesting are the scenes shot in the 112 (the European 911) control roam and the entire operation that was set up in no time. One of the busiest squares of Amsterdam had to be cleared because the captor carried explosives. Different units had to be rattled up, brought in position, information needed to be gathered and – partly because the captor explicitly asked for a negotiator – we also have a look into the workings of such a negotiating team.
The film mostly shows the apple store with the two people in it, four people who have fled into a tiny storage room and the main characters of the operation to control the situation.
A fairly simple (yet tragic) event makes a fairly tense thriller movie. The only down part is the typically Dutch ‘underacting’ of most of the actors.
