The old men undertaking the heist – the youngest being 66 played by Ray Winstone, are an unlikely bunch to pull off such a burglary and the cracks in their friendship show as soon as things start to go wrong. Once the police know of the robbery, the detectives’ crime investigation seems to show a very realistic version of police procedure – how suspects can be traced, watched and observed, all from a desk in their office.
In this sense, the audience is keeping up with the ambitious thieves, waiting for the police to catch on to their scheme. CCTV footage is an interesting use of angle and shot size, but importantly creates the feeling that the men are being watched, by both the machines, the police detectives, and the audience. With security, CCTV, alarms, GPS tracking and mobile triangulation, it’s amazing that the film is not complete fiction.ĭirector James Marsh’s decision to use CCTV style camera work as the men plan and undertake the robbery is to great success. The fact that this is about a real heist is great – it’s hard to imagine that the sort of robbery these men plan could possibly work in this day and age. Their burglary at Hatton Garden over the Easter long weekend is like a last hurrah, a time for the men to relive their glory days and retire in comfort with the spoils. The men, led by Michael Caine, who does a great job playing Brian Reader as the leader holding the group together, are all life-long thieves. The score is great, building tension in all the right places and starting with an upbeat jazzy tune accompanying the opening collage of old and new film. The opening sequence sets up a narrative intertwining the past and present, as old newsreel footage and mid 20th century robbery films are cut with scenes from the contemporary film set in London. Unlike many recent heist movies, like Oceans 8 and Now You See Me, this new film King of Thieves doesn’t rely on complex schemes underpinned by impressive technology. This is now the third film in four years to cover what has been named one of the largest burglaries in English history. The movie is based on the almost unbelievable true story of the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company burglary in London in April 2015. But it’s not any old robbery film, this one was real.
The crooks are staging their robbery not just because several of them are in dire financial straits but because they can’t bear the idea of their own increasing irrelevance.The title ‘King of Thieves’, might give an indication that this movie could be about a robbery. On one level, this is another film about the dying of the light. Throughout the film, Marsh throws in subliminal references to the swinging Sixties and to the illustrious pasts of actors like Caine and Courtenay. They try to bully him and to muscle him out of his share of the loot but he is a shadowy figure who, it is implied, may have been manipulating the old geezers all along. They mock him in homophobic language because he takes the care to wear a disguise. The old-timers are relentlessly patronising towards their young accomplice, Basil (Charlie Cox). Arguably the most sympathetic of the motley crew is the hapless Carl Wood (Paul Whitehouse), who would far rather be tending his allotment than committing robbery. When the gang finally make it through the hole in the wall to the safety deposit boxes, he lets out a huge, primal, I’m-the-daddy-now style roar. Winstone gets one of the best and most chilling moments in the film.
He stands on his head and performs stunts to get people to pay attention to him but we are left in no doubt that he is a vicious thug with a huge chip on his shoulder. Ray Winstone’s Danny is (as Reader calls him) a “shagger”.
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