But this film is so lazily constructed that it doesn’t even bother thinking of a new or even a new-ish title. It borrows the name from one of Hindi cinema’s most iconic heist movies of the same name, throwing in a tagline for a differentiator, and then proceeds to cobble together a plot in which every scene and sequence has been done to death, with twists you can see coming even before they start.
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Jaideep Ahlawat plays Rajan Aulakh, a rich art collector who has his fingers in many dodgy pies, and when he is not using them to count filthy lucre, he is wiping blood off them. Saif Ali Khan is Rehan Roy, the whip-smart thief who strolls around Budapest, draping sparklers around his chosen lady for the night and shooting off groaningly cheesy lines. He’s a perfect fit for mature classy, but smirky cheese doesn’t suit him anymore: ‘haan main… magar woh… suno toh’ is close to 25 years behind him. Now when he says ‘churayenge red sun in the gagan’, it’s just cringe.
There’s also the Istanbul-based menacing overlord type called Moosa (Loitongbam) who has history with Aulakh, and who keeps sending him threatening messages. Moosa’s favourite line is: see you on the other side. And you know exactly how this will be used, and who will do the using when tables are being turned later in the film.
There’s also a misunderstood ‘baap-beta’ angle featuring Saif and Kulbhushan Kharbanda, the latter sleepwalking as the straight-arrow father. If you thought you would never again hear that most ‘ghisa pita’ lines in all Hindi moviedom – ‘aapne mujhe samjha nahin’ — you thought wrong. There’s an earnest younger brother (Gagan Arora), swinging between the estranged bada bhai and daddy-o, with nothing else to do.
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Nikita Dutta, as the woman in the eye of both men, wears a sad face and long gowns, and talks about ‘majboori’. Kunal Kapoor has the even more thankless part of the cop fruitlessly on the tail of his much smarter target. And everyone gets a chance to show off their gleaming, chiselled bods in swimming pools.
You feel for Ahlawat, togged out in designer top-to-toe, cigar, sharp suits, golden highlights in hair, light contact lenses, sitting around in throne-like chairs and gesturing at his underlings to do bad things. He is trying for suave, but emits zero sparkle, just like the movie.
Jewel Thief movie cast: Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Nikita Dutta, Kunal Kapoor, Kulbhushan Kharbanda, Sumit Gulati, Paayal Nair, Gagan Arora, Dorendra Singh Loitongbam
Jewel Thief movie directors: Kookie Gulati, Robbie Grewal
Jewel Thief movie rating: 1 star
