Jewel Thief: A Heist That Chokes On Its Own Excess

JEWEL THIEF has an Abbas–Mustan–shaped hole in it. The specifics are difficult to convey, but the outcome is easy to see. Here are some pointers: there is no plot, only plot twists. Plot twists have twists, and the twists are twisted for more twists. All characters are uniformly smug, and each is afforded a minimum of five backstories. Everyone is outwitting everyone else, and by the time the second round of outwitting begins, logic takes a backseat and having pulpy fun is the goal.

If things were currently not this bleak, then dismissing such chaotic cinema would have been easy. But Hindi films are undergoing a severe creative crisis and harbouring nostalgia for mindless escapism, to the point of refashioning it, makes complete sense. I reckon this to be the starting point of Jewel Thief, which, although directed by Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal, has the idiocy of an Abbas–Mustan thriller and the aesthetic of a Siddharth Anand (also the producer) film. On paper, it is an alluring combination (imagine ten insane flashbacks and each scored to a banging score), but the film is not half as fun as it is primed to be; it is caught within the maze of outsmarting us and ends up choking on its own excess.

The premise is as old as time. A master thief is brought in by a wicked man to steal a world-famous jewel. Connecting them are globe-trotting locations, an elaborate heist, an unrelenting cop, and two men fighting over a mysterious woman. None of this is new, but there is ample scope to do something inventive with it, even if that includes basic imagination at the level of staging. Jewel Thief, which borrows its name from Vijay Anand’s 1967 film and executes a clumsy hat tip by using the filmmaker’s name as an alias in a fleeting scene, remains consistently dull and undermines the potential of the actors involved.

Rehan Roy (Saif Ali Khan) is a crafty thief who steals with the finesse of an artist. After his righteous doctor father (Kulbhushan Kharbanda) throws him out, he stays away from India and lives in Budapest. In the meantime, a devious gangster, Rajan Aulakh (Jaideep Ahlawat), sets his eyes on a rare jewel called Red Sun (dubbed as Kohinoor of Africa), which is slated to be exhibited in Mumbai. Taking his father as hostage, Rajan brings Rehan back to India while a cop called Vikram Patel (Kunal Kapoor) is busy trailing them.

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Jewel Thief takes these various strands and crafts a neon-lit mess. Keeping the blinding colour grading aside (there is a piece waiting to be written on that), it is bewildering how the film takes the opportunity of having actors like Saif Ali Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat in the same frame and squanders it with impunity. It is not the lack of logic I am after, but the complete absence of style that is frustrating, given that both these actors are capable of imbuing even random gestures with swagger. In the film, they are reduced to sledging each other (Ahlawat uses only hands to talk after a while), and although they share many scenes, they get little to nothing to play with.

Gulati and Grewal go through the conventional route of packing in at least three twists every half an hour, but that comes much later. The first hour is spent setting things up, but the writing is so loose that more and more questions arise: Who does Rehan steal jewels for? How far back do Rehan and Vikran go? Is the gamer with red hair a figment of Rehan’s imagination? Is she AI? Is the film made by AI? Did the characters forget about the jewel? Did they forget they are in a film? Did the makers con Kunal Kapoor to be in it since his reaction and dialogue are one and the same?

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To be fair, heist movies in Hindi cinema have largely been saddled with irrationality. But the best ones offset a lack of cohesiveness with plenty of fun. Jewel Thief resists all camp. It could have been Ocean's Eleven, but sticks to being an unauthorised sequel of Race. I am not sure about anyone else, but Abbas-Mustan would not approve of this.

Jewel Thief is currently streaming on Netflix.