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Banish from your mind all thoughts of ‘ze buhhhhhmbb’: this thrilling film tells the tale of the real-life Pink Panthers, a notorious gang of jewel thieves made up of more than 200 members in small, unconnected cells across the world.
Havana Marking’s film uses interviews with the gang members themselves and their couriers, plus the detectives on their trails, juxtaposed with surveillance and historical footage, reconstruction, and lovely noirish animation, to weave a story that has it all, including Interpol agents, a Mata Hari-type beauty gathering intelligence for the man she loves and a tenacious reporter on their trail.
Elements such as these play on the story’s glamorous ‘Hustle’ side, but there’s a much darker side – one inextricably bound up with the conflicts and break-up of the Balkans. It’s here, in the death of Tito and the rise of Milosevic, in the brutality and deprivation of war, that the Pink Panthers played and prospered, via the smuggling activities and black markets that emerged and flourished under well-meaning international action such as sanctions.
It’s a fascinating story that connects international affairs, economics, human stories and the shady areas of the diamond industry, and, while it might feel a long way from our everyday lives, it’s not necessarily so. If you believe the diamond in your most expensive piece of jewellery is a certified ‘clean’ stone from Sierra Leone, you could be very wrong.