Two short, recent films today. Both have their moments, but not enough to live up to the potential of their storylines. And despite short running times, they both felt a bit too long, which rather said it all. The Hatton Garden Job disappointed me more, because the true story on which it's based is so remarkable - an extraordinarily lucrative heist carried out by a small gang of veteran criminals. Despite the arrests and convictions that followed, questions about the crime remain.
This film makes up answers to some of those questions, inventing a character played by Matthew Goode who is hired to do job by a glamorous female Hungarian gangster, played rather improbably by Joely Richardson. We never really learn enough about either character to become fully engaged with them, and I was amused by one negative review which compared Richardson's performance to that of a frazzled magician's assistant. Well, it isn't her finest hour, but I remain a fan of hers.
The snag with a heist movie is that it is easy to fall into the trap of following a formula: the gang is assembled, the heist is carried out, and then things go wrong. This film doesn't do anything original with those elements, even though the gang members, including the excellent David Calder, are a likeable bunch - much more likeable than their real life counterparts, no doubt.
A couple of days after watching this, I came across Ambush in Leopard Street, a 1962 B-movie about a diamond heist in London. Apart from Bruce Seton (aka Fabian of the Yard) the cast was as forgettable as the script, but really there wasn't any less to it than there was to The Hatton Garden Job, even though the new film looks much flashier.
Freehold, also known as Two Pigeons (I wonder why they changed the title... or perhaps I don't!), is a revenge thriller, a black comedy, including scenes which will appeal to connoisseurs of the repellent. Having met a few young London estate agents some years back, the idea of one of their number getting an overdue come-uppance is, I'm sorry to say, rather appealing, but again I didn't think the script fulfilled its theoretical promise. I did, however, think that the ending was pretty good, and rather better than the lead-up to it.
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