Rei dos Ladrões

The film is inspired from the true story of the Hatton Garden heist (thus, the script is already half-written) and the main actors are usually excellent. Despite this excellent a priori, the global result is bland, dull and devoid of passion. So boring that I was almost sleepy. As a synthesis: frustrating!

For those who say this movie is slow and low budget: what did you expect? This is not Transformers, there is no Mark Wahlberg or Bruce Willis from the 90's, no CGI, no John Woo feat. Michael Bay. This is just a well delivered true story, brought to you by many of the best actors of our time. And it does not want to be more, so why do you?

No, there are no big car chases, or explosions. No fancy lasers, or big combat scenes. However, it is a fun story of aging burglars looking to score their final hurrah, portrayed by a slew of veteran actors who still have the skills to go from dottering elder to angry thug. Loved the use of the clips from their previous films as flashbacks. It was a refreshing change from CGI or Photoshop aging.

I watched this movie at home on DVD from my local library. The cast features several of the best older British actors.

If you look up the 2015 Great Hatton Garden heist you will see that this movie pretty closely portrays what happened. The average age of the perpetrators was 69. The first half of the movie is for planning and carrying out the heist, over an Easter weekend. The second half is the surveillance that eventually identified them and allowed their capture.

Not a great movie but an interesting one, based on real people and real events.

This film very much feels like a metaphor for the actors themselves, one last go at making some money and it all going wrong.

The film didn't know what it wanted to be, a gritty crime drama or last of the summer wine.

No back story on the gang at all apart from 10 seconds of old footage. We're rushed into the heist scene and before you know it it's all done and dusted. That leaves time for endless squabbling of characters you don't really know anything about.

A strange casting with Michael Gambon, arguably the best actor there - cast as a bumbling idiot. Jim Broadbent playing the nasty hard man, which just doesn't suit him given the film's we're all used to seeing him in.

Ray Winston was good and played well throughout the film, but again a very tenuous relationship to the gang and zero back story makes it hard to get involved with the characters.

The production quality for me was also let down, had the feel of a low budget tv drama, though I suspect this is because they clearly blew the budget on the cast.

I'd save this one for a long haul flight or when it's free on Amazon.