King Of Thieves is the telling of the true-life Hatton Garden Robbery which took place in April 2015 where a group of “over the hill” thieves made off with up to £200 million in cash, diamonds and other jewels in a clever raid on a vault in London’s Hatton Garden Jewellery district.
There’s an all-star cast in this film – Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent, Paul Whitehouse, Ray Winstone, Michael Gambon and Tom Courtney star as the “old time” criminals who are joined by young “Basil” (Charlie Cox) who enables them to get into the vault and disable the security.
The first two thirds of the film centres around putting the gang together and the heist itself, with the final third showing the aftermath of the robbery, the squabbling that ensues and the police investigation.
I was a bit surprised to see King Of Thieves come out, after all the well received
Hatton Garden Job
starring the ever-grumpy Larry Lamb was only released a year before in 2017 and covered the robbery in detail.
If you’ve seen The Hatton Garden Job then The King Of Thieves isn’t going to shed any new light on the subject, although I did find the way that the police pieced together the investigation interesting (note to self: when casing a joint don’t do it in your own vehicle – especially if it’s a flashy Mercedes!).
My main issue was that there were 3 women in the film but two of them (playing police officers) never even spoke a line and the wonderful Francesca Annis was only there as a way to keep Michael Caine’s character on the straight-and-narrow. The Hatton Garden Job had Joely Richardson tearing up the scenery as the evil Mafia connection and I think King Of Thieves could have done with a stronger female performance from one of the Police Officers.
If you’ve seen The Hatton Garden Job then I’d give King Of Thieves a miss, but if you haven’t then it’s worth a look if you have a spare hour and a half on a Sunday afternoon.
