The Jewel Thief Review: A Mediocre Heist Stuck In Its Own Cliches

The Jewel Thief— The Heist Begins is a redundant, twisting and fluffy tale coded with the Abbas-Mustan Code, intending to rouse our repressed trust issues. Everyone is lying to each other; the script is lying to its characters, the film is lying to its viewers, and the viewers are lying to themselves. The precious essence for which two resilient men are ready to lay down their lives is an African diamond. 

The movie enthrals visually as it sparks a series of events that travel across the world, landing in locales such as Mumbai, Istanbul, and Budapest, yet in this article, we discover the inconsistencies and the misses that render the movie from being a palpable tribute to the original.

Premise of the film

In the first scene, Rajan Aulakh, a nefarious art dealer, beats his accountant to a pulp so that his dried blood can be used to paint an abstract picture while smoking a cigar—the kind Manish Chaudhari villains usually chew on. Rajan, deep in debt, goes and hires renowned scam artist Rehan Roy. He secretly diverts ill-gotten money into Rehan's father's checking account and threatens a tax heist. Because renowned actor Kulbhushan Kharbanda plays this single parent who favours one son over the other, Rehan must abandon his one-night stand existence, and Rajan capitalises on this.

Rajan Aulakh gives him the order to take the Rs 500 crore African Red Sun diamond. The bargain falls through as they start to argue, and Rehan is left to fight for his life. Somewhere in his history, Rehan existed with a father. They do not see eye to eye. Rajan's obsession with greed and bloodshed motivates him to pursue dangerous business ventures and ghastly acts. He has to approach Rehan after coming to terms with Moosa (Laitongbam Dorendra Singh), an Istanbul mafia with whom he shares a bloody history. Rehan's attention is on more than the coveted stone, eyeing Rajan’s wife, Farah. The story unfolds in the tension between Rajan and Rehan, who engage in tenacious battles of coyness and masculinity.

Plot that is predictable and uninspired: No coherent storyline

The Jewel Thief has a hard time escaping its mediocrity despite its valiant attempts. The two men who are deemed to be mature adults play false as high school boys in a futile bid to reveal and keep the other down. Their little ruse turns out to be dull as the subsequent plot unfolds. Rehan, who was initially seen in Budapest, quickly establishes his skill as a cunning thief. After tricking two incompetent special task force investigators, he enters Mumbai under false pretences using a forged diplomatic passport at Rajan's request. The schlock opening scene of the film, which introduces Rajan with great fanfare, is predictably indicative of what one can expect to come. Even Siddharth's patented technological brilliance and background music cannot undo the predetermined narratives that flatten self-awareness in this film.

STF officer Vikram Mehta (Kunal Kapoor), who is often pushed into the background, is another major antagonist that Rehan has to deal with. The stubborn police officer keeps apprehending the thief of the gems by the heels and nearly arrests him. Rehan always gets the better of his adversaries. He and the others spill a lot of blood in the two-hour movie, but it's not worth it. It doesn't give any good banter or memorable action scenes either. Rajan's wife, Farah, is a painter. She is interrogated by Rehan, "Have I not met you before?" She retorts, "This line is way past its expiration date." "Iss line ki expiry bahut pehle guzar chuki hai." This conspires to be the monumental stance where logic is damned and the plot instantly gives the hero an exit route when he needs one.

Eye-Catching Aesthetics Yet Involved in Unnecessary Comparisons

The performers are then entrusted to look like artificial intelligence (AI)-generated duplicates of themselves. It's like seeing the future throw a tantrum on an empty stomach. There is no formula for irreverence, especially when you have time to spare. The movie, being along the same lines as the superhit 1967 film, does not serve justice to the legendary original; it does play accomplice to a film worth a one-time watch, unable to deliver beyond surface-level plausibility.

Yet even if it falls flat at times, its visual appeal sparks interest. One particular night scene of Jewel Thief copies the radiation materials in Dexter's lab, illustrating the movie's total embrace of this visual style. Shots and sets are written in radiating greens, incandescent reds, blazing pinks, and inky blues at times. And there are even glow-in-the-dark lipstick colours. Even a random terrace looks fabulous with a great disco feel, so heaven forbid we just happen to spot a dry tubelight or a plain street lamp. That is true of most of what the movie imagines based on the illicit romance and its repercussions.

The performances of Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat and Kunal Kapoor are consistently engaging, yet they never quite match up to the fast-paced narrative the movie demands of them. Nikita Dutta is the most undercut in the script. If done well, her femme fatale performance could have added energy to certain scenes in the movie. It's far beyond its sell-by date and is a total snoozer. The stealth is not here, though. It seems to be a generic concept cobbled together by watching a couple of action films to generate interest. The movie lies adorned in false lustre that fails to shine as it is exposed. The film ends on the footnotes of the heist prevailing in its tandem; one only hopes that it sheds frivolity and embraces pragmatism.

 Views expressed by the author are their own.