by Jayden Leggett, Editor

Slip on your catsuit and steal all you can carry with this daring heist movie. After a cool intro sequence complete with retro-inspired visual effects and spy-movie style music, the film begins with what appears to be a woman and her mother meeting with the woman’s wealthy boyfriend. Before long it becomes apparent that this is merely a ruse that is part of an elaborate scheme to steal the man’s highly expensive artworks.

The theft includes multiple thieves utilizing all of their unique skills: acting, climbing with wires, infiltration using assorted hi-tech gear and so on. This opening scene perfectly illustrates exactly what this band of Korean thieves is capable of. Before long, the Korean thieves are assembled alongside a group of Chinese burglars at the request of Macao Park (a former partner to previous colleagues Pepsee and Popie, who have some shaky history with this mysterious mastermind). The plan is straight forward enough: infiltrate a heavily-secured casino to steal a rare diamond, the “Tear of the Sun”, to be sold to the mysterious and elusive Wei Hong for a cool $20 million U.S.

Proving that there is no merit to the saying “Honor amongst thieves”, trust between various members of the team becomes a huge stumbling block, and as various betrayals lead to the job turning sour, an action packed manhunt ensues to capture the traitors and discover who is or isn’t all that they seem…

First things first: while it is inevitable that comparisons are going to be made between this film and Ocean’s 11, I can confidently say that The Thieves strongly stands as a well-written and unique film in its own right. In fact, the big heist is only really one out of two major portions of the film. While a lot of time is spent on the set-up and planning stages of the heist, the latter part of the movie takes an action-thriller style twist complete with on foot chases, shoot outs and various other adrenaline packed scenarios. A segment involving a thief making a daring escape down the side of the building gives a whole new meaning to “fighting on cables”.

In fact the diversity throughout this film was one of its strongest features. Quirky humor (such as using a young member of the team as “gay bait” to lift a key card from a security guard) perfectly compliment the more serious dramatic set pieces, resulting in a movie featuring a lot of variety and very little room to become bored. My only complaint is that perhaps a bit too much time was spent on showing the two teams of thieves getting to know each other and plan their ultimate theft, but the overall cohesion of this mix of genres largely makes up for this lull in excitement.

Actor performances were solid across the board, thanks to the brilliant casting. Yun-seok Kim was great as the mysterious Macao Park, Jung-Jae Lee shone as the greedy Popie, while Gianna Jun, Hae-suk Kim and Dal-suh Oh provided great comedic relief as the quirky Yenicall, Chewingum and Andrew respectively. All great performances indeed.

In addition to a well-written script and great performances, The Thieves also emerges triumphant on a technical level. The cinematography was outstanding, as was the editing, with shots often being cleverly cut via a linking theme or piece of dialogue that enabled the film to switch back and forth between different locations very smoothly. The music was also very suitable, with a mix of dramatic music for the suspenseful scenes and funky, jazz-styled tracks for the more relaxed scenarios.

Special features for the Blu-Ray are a rather bare-bones affair. Apart from some trailers for Dangerous Liaisons, My Way and Nightfall, all that is included are a couple of five minute clips featuring behind-the-scenes footage as well as some cast interviews.

The Thieves could have easily been a Korean knock-off of Ocean’s 11, but thankfully this was not the case. Strong performances with an even stronger script are combined with outstanding audio and visual design to form a movie that is a healthy mix of quirkiness, suspense and action. Apart from a very naked looking special features component, The Thieves on Blu-Ray is one heck of a solid release. Directors take note, the new benchmark for what heist movies are capable of has been set!

ComicsOnline recommends purchasing your copy of The Thieves directly from the Madman entertainment website by following this link (particularly for residents of Australia and New Zealand).

Rating:

ComicsOnline gives The Thieves 4 out of 5 sexy girls in catsuits suspended from wires.

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