Smash & Grab: The Story of the
Pink Panthers (12A) 89 mins
***
The ten years of audacious
heists committed by the shifting network of Balkan jewel thieves known as the
Pink Panthers would be a gift for any documentarist with a thriller bent, not
least for the astonishing CCTV footage the robbers have generated. Havana
Marking’s detailed Panther primer pursues its subject from multiple angles,
quizzing reporters, cops and sometime gang members, while carefully marshalled
archive frames a deeper sociopolitical inquiry. As one working Serb wonders, if
the gang are the folk heroes their propaganda wing frames them as, then why
aren’t he and his fellow countrymen swimming in diamonds? Could the Panthers be
a flamboyantly acquisitional manifestation of the mob mentality that swept
through the Balkans after Communism fell? The casefile remains open, but this
considered investigation matches the Panthers’ bravura with an organisational
flair of its own.
Smash & Grab: The Story of the Pink Panthers now opens in selected cinemas nationwide from October 16, ahead of its DVD release on October 21.
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