Jewel Thief movie review: Saif Ali Khan`s heist drama is more of a snooze fest

Jewel Thief
On: Netflix
Dir: Kookie Gulati, Robbie Grewal
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Nikita Dutta
Rating: 2/5

When I first watched Dhoom 2 (2006), I knew I am a sucker for a good movie that’s packaged with rizzy leads, witty banter, suave villains, and a dollop of pizzazz! Since then, I have called this genre of movies Sexy Action. In the past few years, the one man who has cracked the formula is Siddharth Anand. His visuals are so sumptuous that one almost forgets to check the plot. Think of Hrithik Roshan’s entry sequence in War (2019). There is hardly anything else you would remember from that film.

I wish the same could be said about Jewel Thief—The Heist Begins. Since smarts are hardly expected of the film, it should at least have been one of those breezy date-night viewings. Instead, Anand’s team—directors Robbie Grewal and Kookie Gulati—serve us a snooze fest. The faces are still gorgeous, but the story simply never soars! At one point in the film, I caught myself thinking, perhaps Anand shouldn’t have left the reins of the film. He might have made this mediocre story work!

Since he didn’t, we were stuck with a screenplay desperate for impact. Early on in the film, a perfectly loveable dog is shot dead. How else do we know that our villain is cruel? Then there’s poor Kulbhushan Kharbanda, 80, almost catching a stray bullet on his evening walk because someone thought trauma-to-the-elderly will raise the stakes! In another sequence, the villain’s lackey gets his throat slit, not because it made sense but because the writers mistook shock value for storytelling. To quote Kunal Kapoor’s dialogues from the film, “F***!” Because that’s all he said.

Fortunately, Saif Ali Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat light up the screen every time they are on it. Rehaan Roy (Khan) is effortlessly smug as the charming burglar. The film, on his part, feels like a practice session before his Race 4. If this is how he shows up for the next Race, count me seated! He is pitted against an art curator and closeted don Rajan Aulakh (Ahlawat), who decides to ditch the runway to kill people just for the thrills.

Rehaan is roped into pulling off a high-stakes heist by Rajan. He’s doing it to save his father, who once cut him off for being a thief. The plot kicks into gear as Rehaan sets out to steal the sought-after diamond Red Sun while baarah-mulkon-ki-police is hot on his trail. Along the way, our charming chor falls in love with Rajan’s wife, played forgettably by Nikita Dutta. She is the doe-eyed damsel in distress, physically abused by her husband every night, but the writers don’t try to give the character any meat. So, Rehaan has to save his estranged father and his lover just for the convenience of the plot. He is to wipe off the sadistic villain, before getting to his dream of settling by a quiet stream, with two kids, a wife, happily ever after. That’s a whole lot of heavy lifting for one man!

The plot is designed in such a way that the six-packs of the male leads do all the talking. This was working out perfectly until the climax, when the stupidity became a bit too apparent. The thief directs the pilot through GPS where to land the airplane—in the middle of Istanbul, instead of the airport runway. Of course, he is also a master of disguise. Though the cops search for him on the flight with a photo and don’t recognise him, they later approach him for a medical emergency, assuming he’s a doctor—even though his appearance hasn’t changed much. The film tosses logic out the window just to ensure that the protagonist comes out on top. 

I expected the film to be unoriginal and predictable—even its title is borrowed from the 1967 Vijay Anand classic. But what’s truly unexpected is the audacity of wasting two of the industry’s brightest talents on this abomination of a story. It’s a lazy film. Even worse, the final slide teases us with the message: ‘The heist continues’. Some self-awareness is much needed.

*YUCK  **WHATEVER  ***GOOD  ****SUPER  *****AWESOME