Nick Gohil

Visually appealing and a good screenplay well acted out by a strong cast. This movie delivers the Australian outback town feel in spades, right down to minute details of scenes shot in the bar, the pharmacy, the hotel room as well as all of the outback farms and properties. The cinematography is of a high quality. Eric Bana delivers a strong portrayal of Aaron Falk, a Federal Policeman. The rest of the supporting cast have done exceedingly well. The movie intertwines scenes from the past with the current investigation and the editing is top notch. Highly recommended to watch this one.

King of Thieves is a heist movie on valium. The first half of the movie quickly takes us to the heist itself, while the second half laboriously details the falling out of the heist crew. The movie is not so much about the heist itself, as much as it is about the aftermath. The movie sees the main cast of Michael Caine, Jim Broadbent and Ray Winstone throw around a chockful of British cliches in every scene they are together. Ray Winstone comes out of this movie with his head held high. Both Michael Caine and Jim Broadbent try their best to come across as menacing and aggressive old men however neither gets it across convincingly. Caine uses a grimace to convey his aggression on more than one occasion while Broadbent is too nice to successfully convey the aggression and devil-may-care attitude of his character. An actor of the calibre of Michael Gambon is wasted in this movie and his role is almost an afterthought. The casting leaves a lot to be desired. My take would have been Gambon as Terry, Broadbent as Ken, Michael Caine as Brian, Tom Courtenay as Billy Lincoln with Ray Winstone as Danny. Any other actor in place of Charlie Cox, albeit even a cheaper one, would have been suited to the role of the secretive Basil. The audience remains in the dark about the group's past and hence can't relate to the characterisation of each individual of the group. There are glaring errors such as why doesn't Kenny's dog know Brian is in the dining room when they return from the pub? Why do both detectives spend their time on basic police work that any tyro could do? The camera work is fairly close up in the conversational scenes which leaves out the context of the scene. Overall, this movie is fairly dry and unconvincing which means it comes across as a TV episode.

Pros: strong storyline, excellent acting, excellent camera work to show ugly realities of Mumbai, gripping suspense Cons: no sense of catharsis at end of movie - almost felt like a waste of 2 hours at the end, editing in parts is too slick and critical plots of story are cut out (who calls as kidnapper and where is Rahul going with money after Sidharth is caught by police?), some plot holes (why doesn't Sidharth give up names of Rahul, Rakhee and Rahul's friend after being caught by the police?), movie comes across as director's negative opinion on state of affairs in India when the scope here could have been so much bigger and better. Overall, still waiting for a "complete" movie from Anurag K where his view of the world resonates with the audience and delivers a finished product rather than an enigmatic one which flatters to deceive.