A red diamond brings the worst out of two men—a criminal kingpin and a globetrotting con artist—in Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins. The trouble is, it does not spare the film either.
Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins, all style and no substance, is an abomination of monumental proportions. Beyond trite, it rests on a premise that should have been snuffed out on paper itself.
The precious object that two combatants are ready to die for is of African provenance. It triggers a rigmarole that traverses the world—Budapest, Istanbul, Mumbai—for inspiration. It finds none. The heist thriller piles inanity upon inanity and never pauses to ponder why.
Produced by Siddharth Anand's Marflix Pictures, the Netflix film is directed by Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal. It has come from the stable that delivered War, Pathaan, and Fighter. Don't let that fool you.
Unscrupulous art collector Rajan Aulakh (Jaideep Ahlawat) hits a momentary rough patch. He pins his hopes on the Red Sun to bail him out of the tight spot he is in. He blackmails Rehan Roy (Saif Ali Khan) into agreeing to rob the priceless diamond from a museum in Mumbai.
Rehan has a dad somewhere in his backstory. The two do not see eye to eye. Rajan has a blood fetish (more on that later) that leads him into heinous deeds and dangerous deals.
An agreement with an Istanbul crime lord Moosa (Laitongbam Dorendra Singh), a man he has a history of violence with, forces him to turn to Rehan. As Rajan and Rehan engage in a battle of attrition, it isn't the coveted stone alone that has Rehan's attention. Rajan's comely but unhappy wife Farah (Nikita Dutta), too, is in his sight.
When the film begins to meander, the heist shifts from the ground to the sky, from an art museum in Mumbai where the precious stone is on display to a commercial jetliner ferrying a prince and his entourage to London. But no matter how hard it tries, Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins struggles to lift itself out of its mediocrity.
Rehan is weighed down by the guilt of having broken away from his family—a do-gooder doctor-dad (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), a feckless kid brother (Gagan Arora) and a mother whose death he has not been able to live down. Rajan, driven by greed and a craze for power, revels in drawing blood at the slightest provocation.
The two men go the whole hog. But what their desperate lunges at each other add up to is pure hogwash. They are two hardened adults who act like high school boys out to bully each other into submission. The twists and turns that follow are as lame as their game.
Rehan, first spotted in Budapest, takes next to no time to prove his mettle as a trickster. He hoodwinks two bumbling special task force sleuths and, on a summons from Rajan, sneaks into Mumbai with a fake diplomatic passport.
Rajan's grand entry scene—the film kicks off with it, is pure schlock. He knocks the stuffings out of an errant accountant and then proceeds to smother him to death with a piece of white cloth through which the blood from the man's nose and mouth seeps out.
Rajan is enraged because his offshore accounts have been leaked to the Interpol. The freeze on the cash compels him to auction off the most precious painting in his collection to offset the resultant loss.
Rajan Aulakh is supposed to be Evil Personified but so unimaginative is the writing (script: David Logan and producer Siddarth Anand) that the character, despite Ahlawat's best efforts to radiate menace, fails to break free from a drab, banal straitjacket.
In one stray scene, he shoots his pet Rottweiler dead because the unsuspecting canine not only wags its tail at a Rehan but also eats a biscuit off the latter's hand. A dog that he cannot trust is a dog better off dead.
But all the gore that he and the others spill in the course of the two-hour film is to little avail. It yields neither memorable action set pieces nor any truly impactful war of words that sets the stage for something more explosive.
Farah, Rajan's wife, is a painter. Haven't I met you before, Rehan asks her. Iss line ki expiry bahut pehle guzar chuki hai (this line is way past its expiry date), she retorts. That assertion is true for much of what the film cobbles together by way of the forbidden dalliance and its repercussions. Rajan will kill us both, Farah warns Rehan.
Rehan has another major adversary to deal with—STF man Vikram Mehta (Kunal Kapoor), who he is often pushed to the backseat. The persistent enforcement official keeps snapping at the jewel thief's heels and comes close to nabbing him on more than one occasion.
Predictably, Rehan is always a step ahead of his foes. The plot is after all on his side. So, whenever the protagonist is in need of an escape route, the storyline promptly gives him one, logic be damned.
He can do as he pleases. He passes himself off as a doctor aboard a plane without batting an eyelid. Another character poses as a flight stewardess and gets away with it. What's more, Rehan can even have the captain of a passenger aircraft doing his bidding without a squeak of protest.
The performances from Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat and Kunal Kapoor are steady but never quite enough for a film that needed much more. The script shortchanges Nikita Dutta the most. Her femme fatale act, had it been handled right, could have livened up parts of the film.
Needless to say, this Jewel Thief is no patch on the namesake 1967 superhit. It throws in a nod to director Vijay Anand but does little else that could make the film worthy of being regarded as a passable homage.
Jewel Thief - The Heist Begins is a snoozer all the way, a shiny trinket long past its sell-by date. But that isn't what the makers believe. They end the film on a "the heist continues" note. One can only hope better sense will prevail.
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Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Kunal Kapoor, Nikita Dutta
