James Marsh directs Michael Caine, Tom Courtenay and Charlie Cox in this crime caper retelling the downfall of the Hatton Garden jewel thieves, a gang mainly made up of pensioners. 

When news first broke that one of the biggest heists on British soil was perpetrated by greying old lags I said to myself “I bet there’s a great movie in that.” And bless the producers of this starry ensemble they get the casting right. Caine. Courtenay. Ray Winstone. It is a Last Orders reunion movie. Add in Jim Broadbent, Paul Whitehouse and a decrepit Michael Gambon and I bet the makers thought we can just leave the camera running and we’ve got ourselves an instant classic here. Sadly King of Thieves is a film of two halves. The first section with the planning and the caper itself, glides nicely. Marsh lays out his game swiftly, adds a neat visual flourish where the old boy illegal larks are often intercut with similar footage from Swinging Sixties genre films. Then after the robbery things fall apart. It becomes a very loose downfall where old men bitch and gripe about each other behind their own backs. For what feels like hours. Very similar to the recent American Animals we shift from charming naughty enthusiasm to reprehensible anti-socialism in the final stretch. I’m guessing this is less a moral choice. I don’t think Marsh cares about a “crime doesn’t pay” message. I think the creatives had too much access to the real old crims’ statements, confessions and mobile phone transcripts. A by-product of the net closing in on the perpetrators is you no longer have to imagine the legend and the myth, their frailty and nastiness has been documented as evidence. It is a shift in tone the more playful air of the film cannot survive. Worst still there is a better, only briefly explored subplot, where the younger member of the team benefits from their ignorance of modern surveillance and childish back stabbing. He uses their infighting to getaway, their greed to snag a small but ultimately more valuable cut. With his mocked disguises, burner phone and low profile he slips out of the country while the tall tale of bus pass bank robbers fires up the media. Maybe his gaming of the experienced “experts” should have been the focus of the final half. Rather than wrinklies moaning and insulting each other ad nauseam.

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