True Action: Kidnapping Mr. Heineken

Welcome to another edition of True Action. In this installment we are going to be taking a look at Kidnapping Mr. Heineken, a movie that is about (you guessed it) the 1983 kidnapping of Freddy Heineken, the Heineken beer mogul.

The film is actually based on a book about the kidnapping titled “The Kidnapping of Alfred Heineken” by Peter R. de Vries.

• The Movie: As the movie begins we are in Amsterdam in 1982. A group of friends, who work in construction and are down on their luck due to an economic recession, go to a bank to get a loan to keep their construction company afloat. They are turned down for the loan on the spot. As the saying goes, desperate men do desperate things. Cor van Hout (Jim Sturgess) and William Holleeder (Sam Worthington) propose a plan to kidnap beer mogul Freddy Heineken to their three friends Jan “Cat” Bolleard (Ryan Kwanten of Blunt Force Trauma infamy), Frans “Spike” Meijer and Martin “Brakes” Erkamps. The five men agree to do it but quickly realize they are going to need some start up money to pull this thing off so they go back to the bank, but this time instead of wearing suits and attempting to get a loan, they are wearing masks and robbing the place. The friends meticulously plan their kidnapping caper, they even build sound proof rooms behind a hidden wall in a building owned by Cat to keep Heineken prisoner until their $35 million ransom demand is met. Preparation was the key as the five money hungry friends pull it off, kidnapping Mr. Heineken (DING!) and his chauffeur. Anthony Hopkins plays Freddy Heineken in the film and as you might expect he steals the show every time he is on the screen. Things slow down action wise at this point in the movie, and weeks go by without the authorities answering the ransom demand, leading to tension among the five kidnappers. Eventually the authorities do comply and back in 1983, when this all actually happened, it was the largest ransom ever paid for an individual. This is about the time where everything starts to unravel for our kidnappers and the action picks up again. All five men are eventually caught and serve time for the kidnapping. And the film ends with a line that Freddy Heineken used earlier when speaking to his captors, “There are two ways a man can be rich in this world, he can have a lot of money, or he can have a lot of friends. But he cannot have both”.

The actual proof of life photograph of Freddy Heineken.

• The True Story: How does the movie differ from the actual events? For one Heineken beer bottles in 1983 were brown, not green as they are today and as they are depicted in the film. But if you ask the author of the book “The Kidnapping of Alfred Heineken” he would tell you there are a lot more differences than the color of the beer bottles. In fact, Peter R. de Vries refused to go to the premiere of the movie because of how the final product differed from his book and the actual historical facts. de Vries also had an issue with the accuracy of the 2011 movie The Heineken Kidnapping (yes there have now been two movies made based on the subject, the 2011 version had Rutger Hauer as Alfred Heineken) which prompted de Vries to be involved in the Kidnapping Mr. Heineken movie in the first place.

The real Cor van Hout and William Holleeder.

• The Aftermath: After serving their 11 years in prison, Cor van Hout and William Holleeder would become known as “The Godfathers of the Netherlands” as they were calling the shots in the criminal underbelly of Amsterdam often referred to as the Penose. Holleeder would eventually become the sole kingpin after he ordered the hit on his best friend Cor van Hout. Holleeder is currently in custody and awaiting his trial for ordering numerous contract killings. The Holleeder/van Hout post prison story sounds like a movie waiting to happen… or maybe de Vries can finally convince someone to make an entirely 100% accurate story of the kidnapping of Alfred Heineken instead. As the saying goes… third times a charm. Cheers!