After nearly getting caught on their last job and hoping to let the heat settle, Popie [Jung Jae-Lee] and his talented crew of thieves are lured to Macau for a big job orchestrated by Popei’s former partner, Macao Park [Yun-seok Kim], and which also involves a Chinese group of thieves who they don’t know. The score is a 318-karet diamond called The Tear of the Sun worth $20 million and it’s located in an impenetrable safe, secured by cops in a casino hotel room.
As expected, Popie’s team, which includes “Yenicall [Giann Jun] the wall climber, Zampano [Soo Hyun Kim] the strategy guy, and Chewingum [Hae-suk Kim] the master of disguise,” decide to go on the job with the addition of safecracker Pepsee [Hye-su Kim] who was fresh out of prison and who is out for loving revenge against Macao Park. At first glance, it may seem that avoiding detection from the cops is the number one concern, but as the operation gets ready to take off, the real problem might be finding out what Macao Park’s real plan is, if someone will betray them, if the Chinese and Korean’s can work together in harmony and so much more.
Directed by Dong-hoo Choi, The Thieves has made a big splash over in its home country as Korea’s highest grossing movie of all time, and it makes total sense with the film being comprised of Korea’s biggest stars like Yun-seok Kim from The Yellow Sea and even some of Hong Kong’s like Simon Yam. The movie is essentially the Korean version of Ocean’s 11 only not as funny but certainly as charismatic. The film is a decent watch despite its unusually long runtime for a film like this but it can be difficult to follow sometimes because you have to remember a lot of names as well as who is trying to cross who.
For as many twists, crosses, double crosses, and triple crosses that occurred prior, during and after the bank job, it felt like there were just as many relationship twists tacked onto the story as well which made it feel unnecessarily convoluted and messy for a film that should have been primarily about the heist. I understand that romance and love has a strong presence throughout their [Asian] pop culture but it went into overload with the film focusing on more than three romantic relatio
nships. Had it been more focused, it would have probably been a much more enjoyable, shorter, and cleaner film.
Even though many will find this enjoyable, there were two items that really bothered me about the script and action. The first has to do with the fact that for a film very grounded in reality, Dong-hoo Choi decided to use wire work when one of the characters is trying to hide quickly. It looked awkward and extremely out of place. Secondly, for professionals, the Korean gang should have never taken the job. There is too much bad blood amongst the heist teams and a lack of trust for it to ever actually be successful which, in the end, makes it significantly less realistic than the Ocean films (I know I’m looking too deeply into a generic, mainstream action comedy).
For a Korean movie that feels like a mix between Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Oceans 11, The Thieves does a nice job hitting its mainstream audience mark even if I wasn’t completely sold on all of it. With a bunch of twists and turns and a nice little one at the end to wrap it all up, the film manages to bring a great cast together for some fun diamond robbing action that’ll keep you on your toes even if it focused more on the characters than the heist. It may not satisfy your hunger completely but it’s an entertaining appetizer that will hold you over until your next Korean flick.
Rating: A generic heist comedy that focuses more on the relationships than on the coolness of the heist (6/10)
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