I had a busy week in theaters and at home these past seven days. In theaters I saw The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (review here), Homefront, Oldboy (review coming Tuesday) and Frozen (review here) and then at home it was documentary mania as I watched Herblock, 20 Feet from Stardom, Smash and Grab and The Square. Oh, and then I watched Her at home as well and should have a review of that this coming week.
I started watching the Inequality for All documentary late last night, but it proved too late for me to finish it so I’ll have to get back to that one shortly, but of all the docs I watched only Smash and Grab wasn’t terrific, but that’s actually the one Danny Boyle is looking to turn into a feature adaptation.
The film is the story of “The Pink Panthers” (not an official title), a group out of the Balkans responsible for something like 500 diamond heists around the world and this doc sits down with a couple of them as well as the authorities trying to capture more of them, which is actually something I didn’t quite understand. What does international law say about harboring a known fugitive? I got the impression the two people being interviewed weren’t necessarily still active, but they are confessing to robberies on tape, isn’t it the responsibility of the filmmakers at that point to turn them in?
As for the adaptation Boyle is talking about doing, it could be quite good. The documentary just has this weird way of presenting the story as it all traces back to the Bosnian War and how smuggling jeans, t-shirts, cigarettes, drugs, arms and whatever else people could get their hands on as crime thrived as it proved to be the only way a lot of people could earn any money once sanctions were put in place until suddenly diamonds became a major source of illegal income. That is, of course, the very short of it.
The information presented in the documentary is interesting, but it isn’t very well assembled. Here’s a look at the trailer, give it a watch and then head down to the comments to tell us all what you watched.
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