DVD Review: Diamond Heist

Diamond Heist opens with Terrence Anderson (Michael Madsen) in a gold jacket being a total asshole in some restaurant in London, smashing dishes and whatnot. He makes it a big point of mentioning that he’s lactose intolerant (if you think that will play a significant part later in the film, you are wrong; it’s never mentioned again). He gets a phone call and says, “It’s business as usual around here.” So apparently he’s always an asshole. That, my friends, is the pre-credit sequence.

The film then introduces us to two male strippers who perform in a club full of screaming women until a mysterious chick on a motorcycle shows up and asks them for a light. The guy running the club then calls Terrence Anderson (who owns the club) in a panic, telling him the dancers have disappeared. Why would he bother him with this detail? Why would Terrence care? What, he has only two dancers? I imagine there’s a high turnover in that line of work anyway, so the disappearance of two dancers would hardly be noticed. But no, in the world of this film, male dancers are a rare commodity, and he has to order two new ones from Hungary. Yes, seriously.

So we’re introduced to two somewhat goofy guys driving to work in Hungary. They are late and are soon fired. And with their introduction, the movie gets quite a bit sillier, though the tone remains largely serious. Two other men are hired by Jack Varga (Vinnie Jones) to intercept a package from Terrence Anderson while undercover as his new dancers. Again, why is it so hard to find dancers? And shouldn’t the film have introduced those two men before the two goofy men, so that we’d associate them more quickly as the dancers? As it is, we immediately believe that the goofy guys are the new dancers, so that later when they accidentally become the dancers, it’s no big surprise.

So anyway, the two goofy guys stumble into the intrigue, and decide to pose as the dancers in order to make money. And so they’re to dance at Terrence’s fiftieth birthday party. But then they argue over the plan once they see a tape of the choreography. But who cares? And why is Terrence hiring male strippers for his own birthday party? By this point we’ve already seen Terrence hitting on some female pilot, and there is no indication that he is bisexual, so what gives?

But we have ridiculous scenes of them shaving and trying to learn the dance routine. What does this have to do with a diamond heist, you might be wondering? Absolutely nothing. Not to spoil anything, but in a film titled Diamond Heist, there is no diamond heist. There are diamonds, to be sure, and they most probably were stolen. But there is nothing shown on screen even remotely resembling a heist. (To be fair, apparently the original title was Magic Boys, referring to the two dancers.)

This film desperately wants to be cool, but fails. So then it tries to be funny. After failing at that, it tries to be clever, and fails at that as well. Just putting Michael Madsen in your film doesn’t automatically make it a cool film, though these filmmakers seem to think so. Here is an example of Michael Madsen being tough in this film. While one of his nervous employees is drying his hands in the bathroom, Terrence says: “Do you know how that fucking thing works? It’s basically recirculated air that recently came out of somebody’s ass. So you’re basically drying your hands off with other people’s farts.” What?

Well, the two goofy guys are forced to do a drag act. Why? Who knows? Meanwhile the two real dancers are wandering around the city, acting like they should still be in the film for some reason. But really, the entire film just wanders around for like ninety-four minutes, and by the end you’ve learned to appreciate the time you have and promised yourself you’ll use it better in the future.

Diamond Heist is scheduled to be released on DVD on March 24, 2015. The DVD contains no special features.