In 2015, some old geezers robbed a security vault in Hatton Garden, London's jewelry district, wandering in and out seemingly as the fancy took them, while the police seemed unaware that anything was going on. Several of the people involved were later convicted, but police believe there were others involved. One person who had his box robbed never said anything to the police and at least ten million pounds of jewelry and plate are still missing.
All in a weekend's work for ordinary decent criminals. For four decades, I was a partner and manager in several properties on 47th Street, New York City's jewelry district, and the Hatton Garden operation seems very lackadaisical. We had wire connections to the police and two private security services, ex-cops on guard, and other security measures that no one knew of except the senior partner. Had he died, we would have shut down the operations for a few months while the new senior partner set up a system he would carry in his head. Any thieves would have found themselves frustrated by an inability to find any plans to penetrate a subterranean vault surrounded on three sides by bedrock on the fourth by an underground river, and on top by steel-plated floors they would have to driil through from an exchange with lots of windows. Some desperadoes tried an armed robbery in the early 1990s. The guy on duty, Big Eddie, grabbed his revolver, ducked into the vault and told them to come on; they couldn't get through the security door and eventually left. We told Big Eddie he wasn't there to get shot, damnit!, gave him a bonus and told the jewelers how he had saved their goods. Their attitude seemed to be that it was his job to get shot, and kept their money.
Well, perhaps the corporate structure of the Hatton Garden operation was more corporate than ours, and more reliant on faceless functionaries doing their jobs, which apparently they didn't. My cigar-smoking buddy, who's a security analyst, did an analysis of the heist and came to the same conclusion.
The movie doesn't portray any of the criminals as geniuses, but guys who simply take advantage of the bizarre-seeming English assumption that no one is going to try anything, so why spend money guarding against them? The actors, none of whom I recognized, are guys with credits running back fifty years on the big and little screens. The result is low-key and watchable.
