IT is perhaps fitting that this drama about the real-life Hatton Garden heist should itself turn out to be a swizz.
Playing out like a crime caper, complete with loveable old Cockney rogues, James Marsh’s picture develops into something spikier. While you might enjoy the likes of Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay, and others strutting their stuff, it is hard to leave King of Thieves without feeling you have been done up like a kipper, and that is never a good trick to play on an audience. Swindles are not very rock and roll when you are the victim.
The break-in at a Hatton Garden safe deposit company over Easter 2015 was a made for cinema event. The police thought at first the £14 million robbery was the work of a slick foreign crew, only for it to emerge that the robbers were a bunch of old lags out for one last hurrah, less Oceans 11 than Grandad’s Army, more Porridge than caviar. This is the third film based on the story, and other dramatisations are set to follow. It’s a good story, but not that good.
Michael Caine plays Brian, the titular king. The story opens with his wife’s funeral, at which old faces are reunited. Terry (Jim Broadbent), Danny (Ray Winstone), and Kenny (Tom Courtenay) are talking about the good old days doing bad deeds. It’s harmless gum-banging, but when a young contact of Brian’s (Charlie Cox), gets in touch to say he has a key to a place in Hatton Garden, reminiscing turns to planning.
For the most part, Marsh (The Theory of Everything) lets the story play out like a modern day Lavender Hill Mob, albeit with the cast scattering F-bombs like confetti. There seems to be a competition going on as to who can say the word with the most feeling.
The trouble starts when the tale takes a turn for the bleak and nasty as the thieves inevitably fall out. Moreover, their age, which had been treated as the source of gags, is turned against them to make them seem pathetic. The tone is all over the shop.
Worse, at this point it emerges that there was more to some of the characters than had been suggested. Had Marsh made this known earlier the film could not have taken off as a comedy. Inserting it later runs the risk of leaving the audience feeling cheated.
Caine handles the job of balancing light and shade superbly. Given he more or less invented the style in Alfie, one would expect no less. The rest are a mixed bag, with Broadbent miscast as the hair-triggered Terry.
The film’s best moment comes when Marsh cuts in shots of the cast in their young days. Had King of Thieves taken the same kind of subtle, melancholic approach it might have left less of an iffy taste in the mouth.
A far more satisfying look at growing older is provided in Lucky (15),**** the penultimate film made by the late Harry Dean Stanton. Helmed by actor John Carroll Lynch (Norm Gunderson, Fargo), here making his directorial debut, it is a quiet, elegant farewell to all that.
The Repo Man star plays Lucky, who is living on his own in a small town in Arizona, clinging to his daily routine of getting up, going to the diner, the bar, watching TV, doing his crosswords and smoking, forever smoking. Having always been in good shape, despite the smoking, Lucky reckons he has a few more years yet, but then a fall at home forces him to reconsider.
A star-studded supporting cast, including his friend David Lynch, director of the similarly themed The Straight Story (in which Dean Stanton also starred) and Ed Begley Jr, turn out in a series of scenes, some more successful than others at getting their point across. The best are those where no-one is trying to say very much at all.
Funny, gorgeously shot, and with a fine soundtrack, Lucky is a mood piece that surprises, delights, but above all moves. Cinema was lucky to have Harry Dean Stanton.
King of Thieves general release. Lucky: GFT, Belmont Filmhouse, DCA, Dundee, till September 20, and on demand; Filmhouse Edinburgh, September 28-October 2.
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