Jewel Thief – The Heist Begins: How many times will Saif Ali Khan facilitate the destruction of Bollywood (after restoring it)?

Indian Express

01-05-2025

Many years ago, Netflix announced a grand prequel series to SS Rajamouli 's landmark Baahubali films. A cast was assembled and paraded before the press in Singapore; the series was even given a title: Baahubali: Before the Beginning. It was filmed at Ramoji; people were taken on tours of the set. But the final show was deemed unworthy of Netflix's server space, and, in an admirable display of creative integrity, it was decided that the project be revamped before being shown to the world. A new creative team was brought on board, and the entire thing was redone with a different cast. Remarkably, even the 2.0 version failed to meet Netflix's high standards — we are, after all, talking about the same streamer that nodded in approval when presented with Jewel Thief: The Heist Begins — and the mega-budget project, on which hundreds of crores had already been spent, put out of its misery.
Imagine how bad the Baahubali show must've been to be buried by a platform that thought stuff like Mrs Serial Killer, Maharaj and Nadaaniyan was fit for consumption. It isn't the only thing that Netflix has pulled the plug on, by the way. One of contemporary Bollywood's biggest unsolved mysteries — other than Amitabh Bachchan 's decision to distance himself from Brahmastra — revolves around the (completed) Abbas-Mustan project Penthouse. Nobody, not even cast member Cyrus Broacha, knows what happened to it. They even released promotional stills. The nation wants to know. The nation probably also wants to know why they couldn't just cancel Jewel Thief as well. The movie marks a full-circle moment for the Hindi film industry; one of those 'water finds its level' situations. And Saif Ali Khan would know exactly what's happening; he's been here before.
Saif Ali Khan and Jaideep Ahlawat star in Netflix's Jewel Thief.
He was, of course, the star of Netflix's first original streaming series out of India, Sacred Games. Those were the days. How full of hope we were. How excited Anurag Kashyap was. But then, only two years later, our favourite Nawab headlined the Prime Video show Tandav, which changed everything. While the show could've cratered the Andheri-Goregaon area through sheer terribleness alone, Tandav destroyed the streaming industry for entirely different reasons. What was once seen as a haven for ambitious storytellers, a place where everybody could get paid a fair wage for pushing creativity in the right direction, turned into a hopeless hellhole where ideas go to die. Which brings us to Jewel Thief, a movie that truly embodies the current state of the Hindi film industry.
Not only does it take Jaideep Ahlawat — the single biggest star that Indian streaming has produced — and reduce him to a dancing meme, the movie seems to cater to the exact opposite crowd that Netflix was supposed to have cultivated. Jewel Thief isn't merely a reflection of the state that Bollywood finds itself in, it's a reflection of what Bollywood thinks of you, the viewer. You aren't capable of appreciating films like Masaan and The Disciple, it seems to be saying; heck, you aren't even capable of appreciating Gangs of Wasseypur or The Lunchbox any more. This what you deserve. It's like Kunal Kapoor's cop character in Jewel Thief. In a regular movie, he'd have been a laughing stock for his ineptitude. But because Jewel Thief surrounds him with a couple of actual morons, he seems smarter by comparison.
That's how Bollywood works. That's how movies like Stree 2 and Chhaava get a pass. We've been so conditioned to accept absolute garbage, the minute we see something that displays the bare minimum of competence, we make it a mega-hit. Before joining hands with his son to destroy every last morsel of originality that this town had remaining, Saif went through a similar cycle in the theatrical space, not once but twice. He was, after all, a crucial part of generation-defining films such as Dil Chahta Hai and Omkara — these movies genuinely altered the course of the industry. But then, he also headlined Tigmanshu Dhulia's Bullett Raja and Sajid Khan's Humshakals. In Jewel Thief, he plays Rehan, a suave man who has been disowned by his dad for his career choices. You can't really blame uncle; no self-respecting middle-class Indian father would approve of their first-born becoming a 'chor'.
Rehan is hired by Ahlawat's character to steal a priceless ruby, while Kapoor's scowling cop and his two cronies chase him across the globe. Gentleman thieves have a rich legacy in cinema; in recent years, the archetype was resurrected by the Netflix show Lupin, which itself was based on the character Arsène Lupin. Created as France's answer to Sherlock Holmes, Lupin also inspired a series of Japanese anime shows and films, which, interestingly enough, have counted Hayao Miyazaki and Takashi Yamazaki as directors over the years. All of this is to say that Bollywood's penchant for originality remains intact. Not to validate calls for a more 'rooted' Hindi cinema — 'rooted' is just code for 'misogynist' — but Jewel Thief is particularly unhinged, even by Bollywood's already unreal standards. Even though the movie is supposedly set in real locations, it looks like a fever dream (derogatory). Why, for instance, do directors Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal — wonder who was fired first — insist that the very recognisable Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles is in Turkey or something?
Jaideep Ahlawat plays the antagonist in Netflix's Jewel Thief.
Here's a movie that introduces its 'villain' with a scene in which he murders a dog. It's designed as an intimidation tactic, an arm-twisting manoeuvre to get Rehan to do his bidding. There's an unwritten rule in cinema that says 'don't kill dogs and children on screen'. Some lines simply cannot be crossed. Not a single audience member, regardless of their socio-economic background, would forgive an act this vile. To be clear, it's not that Hindi filmmakers have a disregard for rules. The bigger issue is their skewed idea of morality. They're convinced that murdering babies and innocent animals wouldn't bother us, because it doesn't bother them. This is why, in the last six months alone, we've seen infants being graphically killed in movies such as Marco and Emergency. To make matters worse, after killing his dog, the villain is promoted to a parallel lead for the next hour or so. Weirder still, he's a part of the dance number that plays over the end credits.
Bollywood has been in trouble before, but it hasn't been in trouble this deep in about 25 years. They say that writers are underpaid, and yet they keep turning to the same six people for scripts. After being handed trash in return, they decide to go ahead and produce it. And when the trash project predictably implodes mid-production, they carry on. Serious introspection is necessary, you'd agree, when an industry that won't think twice before greenlighting movies like this keeps Neeraj Ghaywan in the lurch for a decade; that doesn't allow masterpieces by Dibakar Banerjee and Aamir Bashir to even see the light of day. Netflix actually abandoned the Banerjee project, but for it to produce a movie like Jewel Thief with our subscription money isn't all that different from taxpayer funds being used to erect public Wi-Fi towers that'll never work. Who are we kidding, thought; perhaps it's for the best that we don't get free Wi-Fi. All we'd do with it is watch Jewel Thief.