From Peter Yates’s Robbery to Jonathan Glazer’s Sexy Beast, British crime cinema boasts a plethora of 24-carat heist films. The latest offering hoping to muscle its way in is King of Thieves, the based-on-true account of the Hatton Garden diamond heist, which stars a host of veterans of the genre: Sir Michael Caine (The Italian Job), Ray Winstone (the aforementioned Sexy Beast) and Michael Gambon (there’s robberies in Harry Potter, right?).
The Hatton Garden robbery involved the burglarising of an underground safety deposit facility in London, with the estimated value of the take being £200 million, purportedly making it the “largest burglary in English legal history.” The perpetrators were found to be four elderly men who were experienced thieves.
The film’s first trailer, available to watch below, also includes Jim Broadbent, Tom Courtenay, and The Fast Show’s Paul Whitehouse. Directed by Man on Wire and The Theory of Everything‘s James Marsh, from a script by Mindhunter and The Road writer Joe Penhall, King of Thieves has successfully completed the first part of a successful heist: assembling a world-class crew.
Actually pulling it off is the tricky part. The trailer suggests a lighter tone than the set up might suggest; with gags revolving around the bad hearing, lack of understanding the internet and dicky hips of the octogenarian armed robbers. Think more The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel than The Friends of Eddie Coyle.
That’s the first half of the trailer, anyway. The back half — post-robbery — suggests a growing intensity in Caine’s performance especially, something we’ve not seen from the actor since 2009’s Harry Brown. The incident has already been filmed twice since it occurred, in 2016’s Hatton Garden: The Heist and last year’s The Hatton Garden Job (aka One Last Heist).
The latter’s headline cast member was Archie from Eastenders, so King of Thieves at least has the competition beat in terms of star power. Whether they get away completely scot-free remains to be seen…
King of Thieves will sneak into cinemas under cover of darkness on September 14 2018.
