2019 - February
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- DirectorJames MarshStarsMichael CaineFrancesca AnnisOlivia Le AndersenA true crime movie about a crew of retired crooks who pull off a major heist in London's jewelry district. What starts off as their last criminal hurrah, quickly turns into a brutal nightmare due to greed.02-02-2019
Returning to work after the end of the 2015 Easter Bank Holiday, the employees of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Ltd. had the shock of a lifetime. They found their vault, touted as being one of the safest in the country, burgled with an estimated 200 million pounds in cash, gold, and diamonds gone. The police worked quickly and soon identified the thieves. The criminal masterminds who pulled what is now known as the largest burglary in English legal history were actually four old age pensioners recruited by a mysterious younger man who still remains unknown. Now if that's not fertile ground for screen adaptation I don't know what is. So many filmmakers have, since the dawn of film, tried to come up with clever heist films some of which were more successful than others and here comes a real-life story, more fantastic and amusing than most fictional ones. And sure enough, as soon as 2016, three separate adaptations have been announced all three of which have been shot. The first to be released was "The Hatton Garden Job", a low-budget thriller starring Larry Lamb and Phil Daniels, the second a TV mini-series with Timothy Spall which is yet to be released, and the third, "King of Thieves", the decently budgeted big-screen adaptation from the people who brought us "The Theory of Everything" and "Mindhunter" starring a cast to kill for. I had such high expectations for this film that I am disheartened and quite angry to report that despite its pedigree it feels more like an ITV drama from circa 2006 than the movie it, by all rights, should be. So what went wrong? In short, everything. "King of Thieves" is a curiously flat rendering of a messy, bland screenplay starring a group of OAPs whose performances range from disinterested to bemused. But you can hardly blame the talented cast since they genuinely have nothing to work with since the film's characters have all the depth and dimensions of a day player on a cheap sitcom. Leaving the film I couldn't even remember their names being able to differentiate them only as the "deaf one", the "tough one", the "angry one" etc. And even in that, the film remains inconsistent because Tom Courtenay's character seems to be deaf only when it suits the filmmakers. Michael Caine stars as the titular king of thieves, the mastermind behind the robbery. He spends most of the movie sulking in the background or trying (and miserably failing) to look tough. Caine doesn't even try to bring the part to life and seems resigned to merely reciting the lines he's given. None of his trademark charm or wit is anywhere to be seen and for most of his screen time, I could almost hear the beeping of the landline he's using to phone his performance in. Anyway, he recruits his old mates played by Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, and Paul Whitehouse to carry out the robbery. Realising they might also need some muscle, they also bring in the hot-headed Ray Winstone to help out. Also hanging 'round is Charlie Cox, a young and slightly insecure thief who's in charge of the IT aspect of the robbery which none of the old timers is able to grasp. Out of the five of them, only Broadbent is really given anything to play. While the others stand around bickering and complaining, he actually winds up giving a pretty convincing but still undefined performance as the downright psychotic Terry Perkins who's able to go from being a sweet old man to a cold-hearted would-be killer at the drop of a hat. Broadbent has fun with the part but sadly he's the only who has one. Courtney is reduced to whining about his hip, Winstone struts about giving the same performance he's been giving since "Sexy Beast", and Whitehouse seems confused as to why he's even there. Cox, meanwhile, struggles admirably with his nonsensically shifty character but fails to make him seem like a real-life human being. Completing the cast are Michael Gambon who spends the entire film seeming embarrassed at having to play an incontinent fishmonger after an admirable 50+ year career and Francesca Annis whose character dies during the opening credits and who consequently manages to get out of "King of Thieves" relatively unscathed. But let's not place all the blame on the writing. Quite a lot of it rests on the shoulders of director James Marsh whose flat direction, severly lacking in style, fails to make this film in the least interesting. How you take a story as naturally fascinating as the Hatton Garden Job and make it this boring to watch I'll never know. Added to that, his choppy, confusing editing choices and apparent decision to remove any and all plot and character development from the film make "King of Thieves" a difficult film to follow despite its linear and ploddingly paced story. Hoping, I suppose, to evoke the memories of the olden days, he quite often cuts away to fast-paced montage sequences featuring shots from such classics as "Billy the Liar" and "The Italian Job", but the only thing he manages to accomplish is to make me wish I were watching "Billy the Liar" or "The Italian Job" instead of this mess. What should have been an engaging retelling of a fascinating real-life story has been rendered into a dull and drawn out movie throughout which we are made to watch a group of great actors flap about like fish on dry land through a bland, shallow screenplay which lacks both the wit of a caper film and the pathos of a gangster drama. "King of Thieves" is a joyless disappointment.
1.5/4