Copycat heist from Korea pulls it off

Korean filmmaker Choi Dong-hoon made his debut in the big-screen heist genre with The Big Swindle in 2004. His follow-up is The Thieves. Ten professional thieves from Korea - Macau (Kim Yoon-seok), Popeye (Lee Jung-jae), Pepsi (Kim Hye-su), Yenicall (Jeon Ji-hyun), Zampano (Kim Soo-hyun), Chewingum (Kim Hae-suk), Hong Kong Chen (Simon Yam), Julie (Angelica Lee), Johnny (Derek Tsang) and Andrew (Oh Dal-su) - team up to pull off the ultimate robbery: steal the Tear of the Sun, a 318-carat diamond worth about US$20 million, from a hotel casino in Macau.

The Thieves looks and feels very much like the Ocean's 11 franchise. The similarities are staggering, as if the film is a study (and imitation) of its Hollywood versions.

There's a ragtag group, each with a peculiar personality and objective, backstory, revenge missions, and of course the heist part, which is an action-packed payoff. Even the cinematography has more than a shade of the Hollywood films, and then there's the jazzy music that usually accompanies the heist.

If you can overlook these similarities, The Thieves is fun, cool and entertaining.

Barry C Chung