In April 2015, the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit Company, an underground safe deposit facility in London's Hatton Garden area, was burgled by 4 elderly men. The total stolen may have a value of up to £200 million, the incident has been called the 'largest burglary in English legal history.
Thompson has managed to lure a cast who can relied upon to say the lines and not bump into the furniture, but his script somehow contrives to stumble into every British gangster cliché while syringing the last ounce of life out of every scene.
Uniformly likeable leads can't save plotlines heading nowhere, leaving it a film with its fun moments but more frustrating ones, and too little detail to be anything other than forgettable.
From the wocka-wocka retro-funk score to the glitchy Guy Ritchie-lite jump cuts, split screens and wipe edits, to the smattering of rhyming slang, this film doesn't have an original idea in its entire running time.
All the time there's no sense of jeopardy or drama, so you don't really care what happens either way. Stir in the polystyrene characters, as hollow as they are disposable, and it only serves to exacerbate the feeling that you're watching a bad film.
There is a hint of old Ealing comedies in Ronnie Thompson's likeable if very undercharged telling of the story of the 2015 Hatton Garden jewellery/safety deposit box heist.
While the actual event must have been heart-stoppingly tense, the film is without suspense, and is cack-handed and mundane, with a paint-by-numbers voiceover from Matthew Goode.
It's shamelessly derivative, unapologetically old-fashioned, defiantly corny, but it still tells a remarkable true story with a certain swagger and naive charm.
