First off, the title, Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins, is the most Netflix-ass boring generic thing in a growing library of Netflix-ass boring generic things on Netflix. It’s five words strung together in a meaningless fashion, implying that we’re only going to see part of a heist in the movie. Spoiler alert: You don’t. Worry not, you see the entire heist in this Indian movie by directors Kooki Gulati and Robbie Grewal, and good golly is it an underwhelming assemblage of cheeseball cliches cribbed from many other heist movies and crudely stapled together in a fashion that adheres to the formula of modern overconvoluted smash-’n’-grab high-stakes thrillers! Which is to say, no sir, I didn’t like it. Here’s why.
The Gist: Hot take: If you own an original Gustav Klimt painting, you’re a piece of human garbage. Stuff like that should be in museums for the world to appreciate, not in your living room for your small gaggle of rich family and friends to enjoy. It’s not a marushka print from Kohl’s. Anyway, this gangster cretin Rajan Aulakh (Jaideep Alawat) owns a Klimt – for now, anyway. He’s auctioning it off because the dirty accountant in dirty employ to his dirty business effed up and now Rajan has to sell his treasures to cover his dirty debts. And it still isn’t enough to get him back in the black, so he reluctantly calls the Greatest Jewel Thief In The History Of Jewel Thieving, Rehan Roy (Saif Ali Khan), to help him thief a jewel so he can flip it for some quick cash.
Rehan is a smirk and a cheeky strut in a leather jacket who’s fresh off a gig snatching some green baubles (and celebrating by shtoinking a lady who’s more than happy to wear them during the shtoinking), and who’s secretly sad that his dear sweet father wants nothing to do with his son the jewel thief. That isn’t enough to make Rehan cease being a jewel thief, so maybe it doesn’t make him that sad? Word of advice, don’t try to analyze the psychology of these characters, because it’s roughly on par with putting Barbie on a lounger couch and asking her about her childhood, and expecting long, deep ruminations on traumatic events from her past. You know, because she can’t talk. And even if she could talk, well, her head is hollow. (Please note, we’re talking about a Barbie doll here, not like Barbie from the movie Barbie. Just to be clear.)
Anyway. The jewel that needs to be thiefed is dubbed the Red Sun. It’s in the possession of an African prince-type guy and the details about it are utterly pointless, so let’s not bother getting into it. He’s in Mumbai to show it off at the museum, and Rehan’s gonna rip it off. Easier said than done? EASIER SAID THAN DONE. Of course. I mean, it’s in a high-security spot surrounded by invisible laser beams and cameras and all that Mission: Impossible stuff, but far cheaper and more basic, so much more basic, all Rehan needs is a hacker to help him, a hacker who turns up in the plot only when it needs her to. It’s also easier said than done because a cop named Vikram (Kunal Kapoor) and his two goofball partners are on Rehan’s ass. Now, the cops in this movie are very smart but not so smart that they don’t get outsmarted by Rehan, who is smarter than everybody in this movie, but not as smart as the screenwriters apparently think they are.
A couple of subplotty complications center on Rajan’s wife Farah (Nikita Dutta), who’s subject to her hubby’s fists because he’s evil. How evil is he? Well, he kills his own beloved dog because it let Rehan pet it and it therefore wasn’t loyal enough to him. He’s a hardcore no-feelings-having’ mofo. In about two-and-a-half malformed and grossly underdeveloped scenes, Rehan and Farah have an a-Farah (sorry, couldn’t resist), so now Rehan has extra motivation to quintuple-cross everyone else in the plot. Because even though he’s a thief, which isn’t exactly a noble profession, he’s not as evil as Rajan, and Farah’s fate is now tied to Rehan’s ability to successfully be less evil than Rajan. See? Now we have reason to like the guy who takes highly valuable things that belong to other people for his own personal gain. He’s noble! Even though he still prioritizes all this skullduggery over his relationship with his dear sweet father. Note to this movie’s editor: You probably should’ve cut the parts with the father. It’s mucking everything up.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins (but again, it also ends!) is essentially trying to be Ocean’s 2½.
Performance Worth Watching: It’s hard to single out any cast member here, because the prevailing vibe is that everyone is capable of far better than what they’re given in this tedious, derivative, ridiculous movie.
Memorable Dialogue: Oh jeez. The script is chockful of one-liners that aren’t as clever as the writers think they are, e.g., “Pardon my Hindi, but I’m not a f—tard” or “Don’t make a mistake even by accident.” You may cringe at will.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Welp. Netflix makes star-studded stupidly expensive high-flying rapid-fire uptempo blockbuster crapola in other countries too, not just America, the birthplace of Back in Action, Red Notice, The Gray Man and The Electric State. Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins is slickly made, a flurry of edits rendered nearly consumable thanks to several coats of lubricating gloss and enough fleeting flashes of borderline-competent direction and visual whiz-bangery, all intended to make you feel like you’re almost watching a real movie instead of a collection of ridiculous and exaggerated scenes loosely pasted together into a nonsense collage. Such klutzy sleight-of-hand filmmaking, coupled with a clutch of exquisitely costumed and arranged Hindi stars (again, who are capable of so much better than this), comprise a subliminal warning that the film is to be consumed without question or the application of logic. Use your brain at your own risk, lest ye be frustrated and annoyed to great extremes.
Granted, there’s a time and place for escapist fare, assuming it’s made with some level of care and craft, two things The Heist Begins wants us to think it boasts. And sometimes even hacksmanship is acceptable if it’s accompanied by comedy or humility. But this film proceeds with a level of unearned confidence that’s positively gruesome, splashing color everywhere, deploying LENS FLARE and underscoring every goddamn twist, turn, gesture and line reading with irritating music cues. Does it even realize how moronic it is when it has its protagonist explain how he’s going to execute a heist in a plane by saying, “I’m going to steal it from 30,000 feet” (dramatic pause) “IN THE SKY!”? How else would one steal something at 30,000 feet, I dare ask? I don’t think a plane would survive a trip to the Mariana Trench.
As for the plot, it’s the same old thing where the thief is always a step ahead of everyone else, as revealed by Guy Ritchie/Steven Soderbergh flash-forwards and flashbacks. Much of it is preposterous and convoluted and tenuous to the point where suspending your disbelief is a challenge on par with flapping your arms and hoping you reach cruising altitude. Futility reigns. At the very least, the plot could have been framed as stuff Rehan The Very Clever Man makes up on the fly, but no, he knows what’s going to happen in every circumstance, even if things are utterly out of control, e.g., he just knows he’s going to win a fistfight with Vikram, which is a 50/50 gamble, and is also full of so many wild haymakers that even the world’s most highly conditioned boxers would be winded within 20 seconds. Which is to say, all this shit just wore me out. It’s a bad cartoon. And it goes on for nearly two hours. If you press play on this thing, well, good luck, my friends.
Our Call: More like Spewel Thief: The Heist Begins. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
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