Moderately Taken by "The Jewel Thief"

Hi friends,

I watched the documentary "The Jewel Thief" (2023) over the weekend and want to tell you a little bit (and ACTUALLY a little bit!) about it.

The movie details the criminal career of Gerald Blanchard, a prolific thief whose targets included banks, retail stores, and on at least one occasion a crown jewel from a European nation--lending this film its title.

As my life-long true crime fixation has transitioned away from the admittedly more gruesome, murder-y variety into generally less bloody corporate scandals and nonviolent con artistry, I've ended up watching several films like "The Jewel Thief".  I've found that these kinds of movies successfully scratch that morbid itch of mine with the added bonuses of: no one dies (typically... or at least *fewer* people tend to die?) and the very existence of the movies usually indicates that some kind of justice has occurred (even if it's the somewhat less satisfying version of justice in which the bad actors escaped meaningful consequences like jail time, but at least now we know they're terrible because we watched a movie documenting their terribleness...?).

I gave this movie a perhaps somewhat generous 4.  That's because, in the context of several other similar films, "The Jewel Thief" is perfectly competent, interesting, and engaging from beginning to end.  It further benefits from the unusual asset of a central figure who fastidiously documented all of his criminal undertakings on video, from the more banal petty thefts of his teenaged years to the more ambitious multiple bank heists of his adulthood.  We therefore remarkably get to see Blanchard's criminal life unfold through first-hand video footage over the course of the movie.

It gets a 4 yet not a 5 because, if you've seen movies like this before, there's ultimately nothing earth shattering about "The Jewel Thief".  Spoiler alerts (but again, not really if you've seen anything like this before): the guy was always into crime, the scale of his crimes escalated over time, there's cat-and-mouse stuff with law enforcement officials, there's the family member who's willing to plead ignorance about the criminal nature of their loved one's behavior despite their ignorance at best bending credulity, there are people questionably willing to praise the anti-hero's aptitude for crime as a twisted form of "genius", and even after that "genius" inevitably gets caught, he just can't help himself but continue with some version of criminality.  If you're into this stuff at all, you get the drill.  It's predictable yet interesting, low stakes enough to not be all that stressful or upsetting but high stakes enough to hold your interest.  

"The Jewel Thief" is a great true crime doc for a Friday night, should that strike your fancy.  You can watch it on Hulu!

{Heart}