King Of Thieves

This review may contain spoilers!

I'm a sucker for heist films and this talented cast make for quite the rogueish crooks. I would give King Of Thieves a 7.5/10.

King Of Thieves is a heist film based on the true events of the Hatton Gardens 2015 burglary, in which a group of renowned thieves take on a job they'd been hoping to pull off for years. What I like about this feature is the casual camaraderie the whole cohort shares, there's a lot of banter at the expense of one another and this translates into the heist scenes, revealing how professional they are at stealing. As the film progresses it becomes intriguing to watch as the cohesiveness of this crack team falls apart; making idiotic mistakes, getting cold feet or attempting to turn upon one another. Greed gets the better of the thieves here and besmirches the code of honour that runs amongst them, it's an interesting film about the decline of an era of criminals. The cinematography looks really good, keeping steady and in motion to immerse you into the setting while also taking some creative efforts by developing shots from different security cameras. The score for the film has a gripping light edge that is unique to the heist genre, while the soundtrack totes some brilliant numbers with 'The Man' by Jamie Cullum amongst the standouts.

Charlie Cox, who played Basil, presents a role who is very restrained and at odds with the rest of the thieves; Cox presents an outsider who is just as competent as the rest, if not a little more duplicitous. Jim Broadbent, who played Terry Perkins, is quite a mean-spirited role prone to bullying in this; Broadbent plays to the ego of Perkins marking a big downfall come to the end of the film. Ray Winstone, who played Danny Jones, was truly neck and neck with Caine for best performance in this film; Winstone plays a thug who is very prone to bouts of extreme anger and narcissism that make him fascinating to watch. Tom Courtenay, who played John Kenny Collins, is hysterical as the rather dottery member of the group who has lost his sanity somewhat; Courtenay really makes for an eccentric role and stands out as the comedic performer of the cast.

However, the best performance came from Michael Caine, who played the leading role: Brian Reader. Caine is fantastic at presenting a calm and efficient role, one who is extremely adept at whatever he does in many of the films he is in. While the above is true in this feature too, it's interesting to see Caine take on a darker persona: this kingpin of thievery. The way Caine handles scenes in which he has to quietly lay down the law and bully his subordinates into following his vision you feel the strength behind his composed figure. Yet what really made him stand out were the moments in which Caine was completely losing his cool, when this role was consumed by avarice and envy at what his partners were swindling him out of.

This film is a very slow burn to watch, quite intentional given the nature of the characters and the heavy focus on the aftermath, but that doesn't mean this doesn't greatly affect the pacing in a serious way. There was also a tendency to give away big reveals a little early, most significantly being showing Basil as having taking the lion's share of the heist as a way of ending act two rather than immersing it into act 3. The editing for the film was rather slow and chopped up great cinematography into surprising places, most significantly the flashbacks to past heists were confusing and didn't really add a whole lot to this feature.

Michael Gambon, who played Billy 'The Fish' Lincoln, places up the oddness of his character but seems to be really going at this character in an exaggerated way; Gambon doesn't put a lot of effort here and it shows in this goofy role. Paul Whitehouse, who played Carl Wood, has the least amount of screen presence in the cast; Whitehouse's role could have done with less of a focus if he was just going to disappear halfway through the second act.