The Takeover is a thriller that revolves around coding and hacking. The film’s protagonist, Mel Bandison, is a tech expert by day and an ethical hacker at night. She takes up a job with a company called Rotramax, to do a final check on the software of their self-driving bus. But she finds a pipeline put there by hackers. With a few clicks of her fingers, Mel sends in a Trojan Horse, blocking the hackers from accessing the bus’s data.
Unfortunately, this one act leaves her the target of a dangerous criminal organisation and blackmailed by a British man named Rogers. When she finds herself framed for a murder, Mel is forced to take the help of Thomas, a man she went on one date with, and go on the run.
Rogers and his organisation release a fake video of Mel shooting a man dead, which sends the police after her. Unfortunately, the video quality is too good for Mel to prove it’s a fake. Needing the talents of an expert greater than herself, Mel and Thomas seek out Buddy Benschot, who was once Mel’s mentor.
Buddy is able to track the code used to hack the bus back to the real perpetrators — it’s none other than Xiao Ming, the software company that helped create the bus along with Rotramax. He figures that they are going to use the bus’s facial scanning software to gather sensitive data about people and sell it to the Chinese government.
Mel realises that when she entered the bus, it scanned her face, and that’s how they were able to produce the video of her. She makes a plan to hack back into the bus and find proof of the scan which will help her take the fake video apart. Thomas doesn’t agree with her plans and they part ways, with Thomas giving himself up to the police.
But when Mel reaches the server room in Rotramax’s office, Rogers comes out from the shadows and pulls a gun on her. He threatens her, telling her to put in the encryption for the Trojan Horse but Mel turns the lights out and escapes. Before giving chase, Rogers fires shots at the server. It goes up in flames and the bus, currently filled with passengers on its first-ever run, loses control. Meanwhile, Rogers and Mel engage in a fight until the police come onto the scene.
Mel and Detective Daoudi, who has been investigating her, reach the server room and put out the fire. When they realise the bus is out of control, Mel says she can hack it and make it stop. She contacts her other hacker friends but they tell her the bus will need a receiver.
Coincidently, Thomas leaves the police station in Buddy’s car and calls Mel. Mel tells him to take Buddy’s transmitter, which is in the car, and connect it to the bus. With a daring leap from car to bus, Thomas makes it inside and connects the transmitter. Mel hacks the bus, stopping it right before it reaches the edge of a bridge.
After stopping the bus, Mel brings up the scans of her face taken by the bus, thus proving to Detective Daoudi that the video is fake and she is innocent.
As Mel walks out of the building we see an injured Rogers being attended to by the medics while a policeman stands by him. It’s safe to assume that Rogers will get what he deserves.
One day, Mel receives a message from Buddy. It’s a pre-recorded message that was directed to go to her, should Buddy pass away. In the video message, Buddy tells her how he cherished his time with her. He says he used the money he stole to build a network, for Mel. He says it’s large enough for her to target multinationals, government leaders, and billionaires. He tells her to go change the world like she wanted to.
The film ends with Mel and Thomas going for a run together, the exchanged glances between the two suggesting a hint of romance.
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The Takeover (2022) Ending Explained – Does Mel prove her innocence? – TheReviewGeek
