King of Thieves

In the three years since the Hat­ton Gar­den bur­glary took place, three films have been made to doc­u­ment it. The rob­bery of an esti­mat­ed £14 mil­lion worth of valu­ables back in 2015 by a unit of age­ing, expe­ri­enced thieves, has now passed into leg­end as the largest bur­glary the coun­try has ever seen. Direct­ed by James Marsh, King of Thieves is the lat­est attempt to tell the sto­ry, detail­ing the heist itself and the trou­bled friend­ships between the men who tried to get away with it.

Michael Caine leads the cast as Bri­an Read­er, the tit­u­lar King of Thieves, mourn­ing the recent death of his wife. He is coaxed back to crim­i­nal­i­ty when a younger friend (Char­lie Cox) reveals an entry plan for the Hat­ton Gar­den safe deposit vault, and they begin to recruit the old gang of swindlers to help break in. The group are greedy, blokeish bul­lies who are bored at the thought of retire­ment and des­per­ate for some excitement.

Marsh’s restag­ing of the rob­bery and its after­math is enter­tain­ing enough, and the film rarely feels slow or strained. The script has some sharp and wit­ty moments but the com­e­dy tends to rely, unsur­pris­ing­ly, on tired jokes about being old, and exces­sive use of the f‑word. Tom Courte­nay does stand out for his comedic tal­ents here, and in its more sin­is­ter turns King of Thieves allows Jim Broad­bent to shine as a threat­en­ing antag­o­nist, keen for his own lead­er­ship role.

Age is at the crux of the nar­ra­tive, but it feels cheap­ened and mis­han­dled through­out. For the group to get off light­ly in court because of their old­er, ail­ing bod­ies, would be ​“patro­n­is­ing”, remarks Read­er towards the end of the film. The trend King of Thieves fol­lows as a whole, how­ev­er, is patro­n­is­ing in itself, this exas­per­at­ing genre of geri­atric heist movies and the ​‘one-last-job’ excuse. Oth­er con­ver­sa­tions through­out the film sug­gest there was room for a more nuanced exam­i­na­tion of age­ing, com­bined with the pres­sures and fragili­ty of a tra­di­tion­al masculinity.

Read­er strug­gles to talk about his wife’s death, while accom­plices Perkins (Broad­bent) reas­sures the oth­ers that he’s not ​“inse­cure”, and Wood (Paul White­house) stands strong against jokes about his Crohn’s Dis­ease. These brief moments are mere hints that nev­er real­ly linger, and the film often opts for the cheap laugh over a more insight­ful inter­ro­ga­tion of the per­son­al crises the men are facing.

King of Thieves fal­ters in attempt­ing to fol­low two heav­i­ly con­flict­ing threads, one that accu­rate­ly reflects the work of the real-life brutish crooks and one that revolves around the acclaimed cast and their own act­ing lega­cies. Marsh jux­ta­pos­es flash­es of Lon­don in the Swing­ing Six­ties, all fast cars and styl­ish gang­sters, with Lon­don now, in a con­fus­ing and some­what mis­placed com­par­i­son. There is noth­ing slick about the Hat­ton Gar­den rob­bers with their xeno­pho­bic and homo­pho­bic quips, their crim­i­nal back­grounds, and their aggres­sion towards one anoth­er, let alone any­one else.

The con­fla­tion of star with char­ac­ter through­out, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the clos­ing scene, seems a dan­ger­ous com­pli­ment to the thieves and sug­gests the film is far more con­cerned with pay­ing homage to its actors. At one point, Winstone’s char­ac­ter states that he ​“ain’t in the busi­ness of encour­ag­ing some old man’s van­i­ty,” but it seems Marsh per­haps is.