Jewel Thief – The Heist Begins - All that glitters is not Gold

Jewel Thief – The Heist Begins - All that glitters is not Gold

Jewel Thief masquerades as a heist drama in the garb of an Abbas-Mustanesque thriller with numerous twists and turns - many silly, some strictly OK and it's lead men , Saif and Jaideep, playing it to the gallery.

It amused me to see Saif Ali's Rehan Roy break into the most complicated and state-of-art museum with robust security infrastructure with so much of easy and a characteristic uber cool finesse to steal the world's most elusive African diamond - The Red Sun after being blackmailed by Jaideep Ahlawat's sadistic and cold-blooded crime lord masquerading as a well-known art curator.

Clearly wearing his character from Race like a Tuxedo, Saif is Ranvir in spirit who would pull off his own master plan amidst a web of trickeries while being pursued by Kunal Kapoor's Vikram Patel(from STF), walking a tightrope between life and death and extending a romantic fling with Aulakh's wife ( played by Nikita Dutta), and most importantly,with a 'I am just a simple thief' modesty.

Chaos, twists and unexpected alliances unfold in the ambitious high stakes 'race' , let down by a weak writing by David Logan and producer, Siddharth Anand.

Jewel Thief camouflages between a cat-and-mouse game and a game of wits - who would outsmart whom, but misses the slickness of an engrossing thriller. Sometimes, I found it quite silly.

Director Robbie Grewal and Kookie Gulati don't fail to entertain entirely, while DoP Jishnu Bhattacharya lends a wonderful colour palette to Mumbai as well as the heist game up in the air.

Saif and Jaideep, both are actors who would kill it in intensity, when their characters are raw, rustic and earthen.

Here, they are planted in a suave, urban set up which quite doesn't exploit their potential to the fullest.

While Saif plays it cool and seems to be on a roll, I found Jaideep a bit inert.Their dynamics offer a momentary dazzle, more than the Saif-Nikita off-the-mark chemistry.

Saif emerges as a source of fun and engagement in this vacuous thriller with his signature self-deprecating humor. Sample this, at one point he says, " Mujra Karaoge Mujhse kya? Aise 'Nawabi' shauq nahin hain mere!" The writers infuse good humor, some genuine research on world-class paintings but not depth.

Already saddled with two bumbling cop assistants, Kunal Kapoor's Vikram who would flare up his nostrils incessantly and utter the F word endlessly after being constantly outsmarted by his prey, appears single-note.Kulbhushan Kharbanda and Gagan Arora serve token presences. Ditto for Sumit Gulati and Loitongbam Dorendra Singh.

 

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