Diamonds might not be forever in a film centred around a massive, ticking bomb on a building site, which is equal parts violent and silly
There are some lively if borderline ridiculous shenanigans in this London heist thriller from screenwriter Ben Hopkins and director David Mackenzie, brazening out its innate silliness with chutzpah, heavily researched police and army lingo and athletic plot contortions. It’s a violent affair of double-cross and triple-cross that ups its narrative game in the final act for the massive reveal: a head-spinning story of diamonds, some fake … yet also … some real. And it also deploys the classic thriller moment, popularised by TV’s The Night Manager: the three-second bank transfer of millions of illicit dollars, which you can tensely monitor on your smartphone in real time. Oh my God, will the money go through OK? (You’ll need solid wifi or 5G.)
Aaron Taylor-Johnson plays Major Will Tranter, a bomb disposal officer called in when what looks like a gigantic unexploded second world war device is discovered in a London building site, making a worrying ticking noise. The police are under the direction of the Met’s chief superintendent; this is a dull role with none of the juiciness of the guys’ parts, played deadpan by Gugu Mbatha-Raw. She shuts off the electricity in the whole area for fear of the bomb igniting power cables, then evacuates and cordons off the entire zone – not realising a crew of bank robbers is in there, led by Theo James and Sam Worthington, who are now able to work without fear of being discovered by some pesky member of the public as they tunnel through a wall into a safe-deposit vault from a neighbouring basement.
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