‘Stolen: Heist of the Century’ Review – A Slick Behind-the-Scenes Of A Notorious Heist

In crime circles, one has to imagine that a diamond heist, from within Antwerp’s famous Diamond District no less, constitutes something of a final boss. This is perhaps why the 2003 heist of millions of dollars’ worth of diamonds from an ultra-secure Belgian vault captured public attention the way it did, with its movie-like creativity and execution. Stolen: Heist of the Century retells this story through real talking-head testimony and dramatic re-enactments, using the book Flawless, by Scott Andrew Selby and Greg Campbell, as the basis for its slick fact-based storytelling structure.

Netflix has been churning out high-quality documentaries like nobody’s business lately, and while this one isn’t strictly best-of-the-year quality like, say, Apocalypse in the Tropics, it’s nonetheless impressively cinematic and engaging. It helps, of course, that the story is interesting on its own terms, especially the layers of precise planning that are peeled back to expose how the job was pulled off, but it benefits from its straightforward style and lack of unnecessary artifice. Giving a true tale room to breathe is a filmmaking skill in itself.

Director Mark Lewis includes the usual documentary fixtures, including extensive interviews with key personnel who were involved at the time and are inclined to talk openly about what happened given how much time has elapsed since, but it’s all framed to resemble a thriller, with narration and snappy editing instead of dry info dumps. But the real coup is the inclusion of Leonardo Notarbartolo, the robber who pulled off the heist, who is speaking openly about it for the first time.

Notarbartolo’s testimony is interesting not just because it’s from the horse’s mouth, but also because it might not be true. Anyone inclined to steal 100 million dollars’ worth of diamonds – that’s the estimate; the actual value might have been higher, though given the proliferation of synthetic diamonds infecting the market, it might be much lower in today’s money – is probably prone to flights of fancy, and the documentary frequently calls his claims into question. Since the robbery itself was intricate, including modified keys, hairsprayed motion sensors, taped-up light sensors, and obscured security cameras, the precise nature of how it was all pulled off is the feature’s big, dramatic pull. Notarbartolo’s best-positioned to explain, but some of his explanations, including a key one about how a combination lock was bypassed, contain a lot of ambiguity.

However successful the heist itself was, the getaway was a mess, and it’s perhaps fitting that the robbers were ultimately thwarted after dumping trash on the property of a man who routinely sifted through rubbish to figure out who to report to the police. It’s a rare win for the snitches, since the presence of diamond-related material in the rubbish gives the police the lead they need. All that intricate planning just to banally bungle something so minor should be a cautionary tale to would-be robbers. You’re never going to get away with it.

Nevertheless, Stolen: Heist of the Century possesses an obvious degree of admiration for the attempt, one that might walk a fine line of glorification. But how can you not marvel at the intricacy of the scheme, the management of its many moving parts, and the lingering questions still swirling around exactly how it was pulled off? This is a documentary that recognises the most essential quality of the story it’s telling is that it’s almost too elaborate to be believed. The fact that it consistently introduces doubt even in the recounting of the real story only adds to that feeling.