Movie Review: King of Thieves (2018)

Length: 1Hr 48
Rating: 15
About: A crew of retired crooks pulls off a major heist in London’s jewellery district, but what begins as a nostalgic last hurrah for the group quickly becomes a brutal nightmare when greed overtakes them.

The Good

• I can’t fault Michael Caine. He’s brilliant and I know most of my experience of him is as a mentor and fatherly figure. Even Now You See Me, is tame compared to his Get Carter roots. It’s good to see him in a modern heist movie and he certainly seems at home.
• It’s certainly an antidote to the fast paced action blockbusters that are saturating our box office. Having the heist done by a group of aging men who have lived their life on the silver screen is refreshing.
• On that note, its really funny. Between the British geezer humour and the commentary of how times have changed, there’s not a scene goes by without a chuckle. It’s best seen in the group preparing for the first night of the heist.
• There’s quite a nice touch seen with the use of footage from older heist movies; making connections between the behaviours then, and now.
• You can’t deny; its quite a cast they’ve gotten together to play cops and robbers on screen for a few hours. You can tell they’re all having fun and it just adds to the viewer’s enjoyment.

The Bad

• I’m not sold on Charlie Cox’s performance and I can’t put my finger on what it is. I know that while the others know who they are portraying, Cox had nothing. However, it does have what I feel is a little inconsistency. The meekness and jittery demeanor doesn’t mesh with the actions in the later part of the movie. I was almost waiting for a
  Keyser Soze type change in personality that matched with the ‘mastermind’ status Basil is given.

The Ugly

• Did I really need to see Gambon and Courtenay converse in the whirlpool?! Did we need that many iterations of the word ‘cunt’? Well, not really but part of me likes that the film didn’t really hold back.

Final Thoughts

It’s a decent watch that i’ll most likely pop on again at some point, but I think the most to be gained from it for me, is a motivation to see all of the main players in some of their earlier films.

Love Han x