King of Thieves

For those who say this movie is slow and low budget: what did you expect? This is not Transformers, there is no Mark Wahlberg or Bruce Willis from the 90's, no CGI, no John Woo feat. Michael Bay. This is just a well delivered true story, brought to you by many of the best actors of our time. And it does not want to be more, so why do you?

A passable and down to earth presentation of the true story of the Hatton Garden Heist with a cast of big names, but little else. Although it shows the thieves as doddering old fools, it also shows them as bitter and greedy career criminals and as such, you can't really root for them, especially when they devolve into squabbling. There's a good sequence as it shows the effort put in to successfully carry out the robbery, but the whole thing lacks drama, and the police investigation in the second half has no personality to it.

The bulk of the biggest heist ever carried out on UK soul that everyone (at least in Britain) knows about is done by the hour mark. The rest of the film tackles the group politics, mistrusts and backstabbing that tore the geriatric heist crew apart. This is no bad thing as it appears to be the best part of the true story from which this film derives it's material.

Michael Caine leads the charge on a cast supercharged with British talent: Tom Courtney, Jim Broadbent, Ray Winstone, Paul Whitehorse and an underused Michale Gambon. The interaction between this rag tag group of British acting talent, transposed perfectly to the gang of criminal minds at the story's core, is electric to watch especially considering how much the actors seem to be playing characterised versions of themselves or past famous roles. Indeed, the last few scenes use archive footage of the actors' past roles (Caine in The Ipcress File, etc) to highlight their characters' criminal pasts to great effect.

It's a fine heist film that still manages to create tension despite the audience knowing full well how the story ends - however, it doesn't add a whole lot to a genre that's been overcrowded for decades. That's not to say it should be avoided; nay, it offers the best chance of us Joe Public in understanding what happened over that extremely profitable Easter Weekend.

Best quote: TBC

Yet another account of the 2015 Hatton Garden robbery that was pulled off by a bunch of geriatric career criminals, and which seems to hold a strange fascination for filmmakers and audiences alike. This one benefits from a stellar British cast (Caine, Winstone, Broadbent, Courteney, Gambon, Whitehouse) and its decision to focus on the disintegration of the gang's initial cameraderie almost as soon as the heist is underway rather than playing safe with unrealistic feel-good vibes. The real gang were unpleasant men, and to portray them as anything else would be a whitewash. Caine is finally showing his age (he's barely seen moving throughout) but still delivers, as do the rest of the veteran players.

I watched this movie at home on DVD from my local library. The cast features several of the best older British actors.

If you look up the 2015 Great Hatton Garden heist you will see that this movie pretty closely portrays what happened. The average age of the perpetrators was 69. The first half of the movie is for planning and carrying out the heist, over an Easter weekend. The second half is the surveillance that eventually identified them and allowed their capture.

Not a great movie but an interesting one, based on real people and real events.