Put Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, Ray Winstone, Paul Whitehouse together in a heist movie and what have you got? Five guys trying to outdo and hoodwink each other as nervy London criminals and not much more. File under Slight but Passable Amusement.
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Watch our interview with Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Ray Winstone
In a scenario based on the real heist that took place in 2015, a gang of veteran wide boys get together to rob the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company in central London. Their quest, diamonds, flawless and otherwise, cash, and gold - which also turns up to some surprise - a haul estimated to be worth £35 million (€39m) in total.
The robbers effect their egress through an awkward route, involving a 20-foot drop from a lift shaft. Then there is some stertorous drilling through the 50cm thick vault walls with a decidedly faulty drill to gain access to the vault. So far, so ho hum, but at least based on the facts one presumes.
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You realise this is not going to be a smart comedy when you start getting the tired quips about the ageing criminals’ unfamiliarity with the internet - that’s a lame one really, no matter what age you are you can be handy with the interweb.
There is the faulty bladder set piece, the faulty hearing aid set piece, the packing-the-beef-sandwiches set piece, all at the expense of Tom Courtenay's implausibly inept crook. At this stage a curious listlessness had set in and your reviewer did not feel that this was going to be a terribly clever 90 minutes.
The action is interspersed with referential nods back to London heist or crime movies from what appear to be the 1970s. Movie train-spotters will enjoy all this distraction and then wonder afterwards why they had to be distracted with such little teaser clips. Then they will truly know they have not seen a great film.
At one point slices of footage from each of the leading actors’ early careers (which the educated film-goer will instantly recognise) are juxtaposed with their characters in the film under review as they walk through doors pretending to be ordinary citizens. Thus the film is trading cheaply and knowingly on former glories when it should be concentrating on a story which in truth does not have much comic value in the first place.
The true-life heist on which this movie is based took place in London in 2015, and was reported on in lengthy pieces in both Vanity Fair and The Guardian. The latter articles provided some minimal background for the film, altered radically by the kind of pale screwball stuff outlined above and at one point that old stand-by, lavatorial humour. That’s the scene in which Broadbent lowers his trousers for an injection in the ass (he has an ailment that demands it.)
I mean, really. Take a smart London geezer-gangster movie like the Jonathan Glazer-directed Sexy Beast, which showed Ray Winstone doing some real acting back in 2000, as opposed to his desultory turn here. Now such a barrel-scraping scene as the ass injection wouldn't have been contemplated for a second in that little classic.
When all seems lost, it seems even more lost when Michael Gambon hoves into sight half-way through as a most unlikely and inauspicious `fence.’ He is the Steptoe-like character who will probably hinder rather than help the chaps move the goods. It doesn't amount to much as a performance, weak as water.
The only thing to be thankful for is that the gang do not employ Cockney slang which would be a cliche too far. The screenplay is quite smart and thoughtful occasionally, if you can keep up with the insider, side-of- the -mouth exchanges and the constant stream of hard-bitten, caustic remarks.
Yet somehow the dialogue fails to be sufficiently intelligent in the end, even if real promise seems to lurk near the surface in spots. Er, King of Thieves is no gem.
Paddy Kehoe
