In a scene from Jewel Thief—The Heist Begins, charming chor Rehan Roy (Saif Ali Khan) and brute crime boss Rajan Aulakh (Jaideep Ahlawat) stand side by side in a museum as they discuss “the heist plan”. Between them is a clueless Japanese tourist who keeps mistaking their covert discussion as directed at him. “Red Sun”, says Rehan, and the tourist nods before enthusiastically replying, “Nippon!” I had to Google this. The tourist had confused the gem-to-be-stolen as a reference to the Japanese flag, which is called the Red Sun of Nippon. After the discussion, Jaideep’s Rajan pulls the Japanese’s leg. “Samjha kya Hakka noodles? (Did you understand anything, Hakka noodles?)” It’s a racial slur, but then only villains have the liberty to be politically incorrect in a Hindi film. The tourist corrects him, “I am not Chinese; I am Japanese,” and Rehan cheekily swoops in: “I love sushi.”

Directors: Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal

Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, Nikita Dutta and Kunal Kapoor

Streaming on: Netflix

That is what Jewel Thief essentially is, a mix of smarts and silly. The heist-drama, produced by Siddharth Anand and directed by Kookie Gulati and Robbie Grewal, is a campy caper which has unexpected blips of ingenuity. It’s frivolous yet fun and isn’t too desperate to push your suspension of disbelief. At a time when cinema is being made solely to rouse either religious or political sentiments, Jewel Thief is a pure genre piece with no agendas but a lot of tricks up its sleeves.

Rajan Aulakh is an art collector who often gets his hands dirty. When we meet him, he has a man tied up in a chair. Outside, an auction of Rajan’s artwork is in progress. When somebody asks about him, one of his minions replies, “Sir is busy with a painting.” He is, in a way, painting a red picture on the tied man’s face. Jaideep Ahlawat makes for a dreadful villain, the kind whose fists do the talking more than he does. His yang is found in Saif’s Rehan—a charismatic art thief—whom Rajan employs to steal a coveted African diamond called the Red Sun. On Rehan’s heels is the hard cop Vikram (Kunal Kapoor). Nikita Dutta plays Rajan’s wife and the damsel in distress Farah. The plan is in place. They will hack into yada-yada and steal the jewel from a museum boasting a state-of-the-art security system (it has been designed in California’s Silicon Valley, mind you). But as heist films go, things will not go as per plan.

Jewel Thief has the energy of an Abbas-Mustan caper in the aughts with a protagonist who has shades of a Salim-Javed antihero in the 70s. Rehan is a thief with a disappointed father (played by Kulbhushan Kharbanda), who is an honest doctor running a charitable hospital. It can’t get filmier than that. But then a head boss is called Moosa, so maybe it can.

The film isn’t revelatory but has basic competence which can sadly be labelled exemplary in the current cine-scape. The heist in question is laughable, full of laser beams guarding the jewel, spectacles with cameras installed and click pens that can put you to sleep. Saif’s Rehan is, of course, always two steps ahead of everyone, and Jaideep’s way of emanating fear is unexpectedly shooting people in the head. But the two leads seem to be having fun, and so are the makers, and resultingly we get lines like “Na desh ki seema ho, na border ka ho bandhan… udayenge Red Sun in the gagan (Beyond the boundaries of the country, the restrictions of the border, we will nick the Red Sun in the sky as per order).

Saif’s charm and Jaideep’s broodiness sail the film through its sea of silliness. The movie often takes leaps of logic, but its narrative often tries to tie loose ends, albeit a bit loosely. Jewel Thief takes you back to a simpler time when films didn’t try to be anything more than films. No jingoistic roars, no pride presentations. Just a hero, a villain, a girl and a quest.