![]() Marsh pays lip service to the whirling kaleidoscopic cool of the Swinging Sixties with his nostalgic flashbacks and retro-flavored soundtrack, which blends a jazzy pastiche score with vintage jukebox hits, but his own cinematic grammar remains firmly rooted in drab docu-realism. The key flaw with King of Thieves is its flat-footed style. Presumably this was a budgeting decision, but it becomes increasingly surreal to witness their numerous wordless scenes, like some kind of reverse Bechdel Test. Bizarrely, two women police officers figure prominently in the second act but never speak a word onscreen. The film’s sole female character dies within the first 10 minutes. The ultra-masculine world these joyless old men inhabit also feels oddly colorless, with scant trace of family or private lives. While it is heartening to see Britfilm royalty like the 85-year-old Caine and 81-year-old Courtenay still playing meaty lead roles, Broadbent simply lacks conviction as a menacing underworld bruiser. King of Thieves relies heavily on its craggy-faced prestige cast to keep audiences interested, but their performances are an uneven mix. Steven Soderbergh pulled off this time-travel trick more effectively with Terence Stamp in The Limey (1999). A smart touch, albeit too briefly and timidly deployed. One of Marsh’s few inspired motifs involves splicing brief snippets from classic old movies into his, including glimpses of the main cast in their youthful primes: Caine in T he Italian Job (1969), Courtenay in Billy Liar (1963), Winstone in Scum (1979) and so on. It proves more successful in the first mission than the other two. ![]() King of Thieves is a kind of triple-level tribute to an elderly cohort of venerable British actors, to a halcyon era of heist movies, and to a golden age of colorful old-school criminals. A trap is set and the usual suspects are rounded up, with one notable exception. Meanwhile, the police identify the culprits almost immediately, alerted by a trail of obvious clues and clumsy mistakes. There is little honor among these thieves. But the film turns darker in its second half as old rivalries and buried tensions flare up into violent threats and back-stabbing betrayals. Marsh shoots the ineptly staged robbery in the same comic register, especially when the gang turn to clownish seafood merchant Billy the Fish ( Michael Gambon) to help hide and fence their loot. Their advanced ages allow Penhall ample room for much comic banter about hip replacements and incontinence, which starts out endearingly human but soon becomes tiresomely repetitive. King of Thieves tracks the genesis of the Hatton Garden heist as Reader puts together a team of fellow gray-haired old-timers including Terry Perkins (Jim Broadbent), John “Kenny” Collins ( Tom Courtenay) and Daniel Jones ( Ray Winstone), the baby of the crew at just 60. But a chance encounter with young computer expert Basil (Charlie Cox) offers him the chance to finally realize one of his long-cherished dreams by clearing out the safety deposit boxes beneath Hatton Garden. Relishing a rare chance to showcase his native cockney accent to the max, Caine plays Brian Reader, a recently widowed London crook who promised his late wife Lynne (Francesca Annis) that he would stay out of trouble after her death. A TV miniseries about these events starring Timothy Spall is also due later this year. His latest true-crime caper arrives after two more pulpy films based on the robbery, Hatton Garden: The Heist (2016) and The Hatton Garden Job (2017). Earlier this year, his maritime mystery biopic The Mercy opened almost simultaneously with a more inventive low-budget treatment of the same story, Simon Rumley’s Crowhurst. But this story’s strong cinematic credentials ultimately counted against Marsh, who is once again late to the party here.
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