Jewel Thief on Netflix: Worst OTT Drop of the Year?

Ever since the launch of Netflix years ago in India, the platform has been trying its best to nail original content, especially in the Hindi market. With the increase in popularity of South cinema, Netflix ensured that they were tying up with popular production houses in Tamil, Telugu, and Malayalam and has gotten quite a good bunch of content with respect to these languages.

But the Hindi market is where Netflix has been investing heavily, and most of the time, they failed badly. Sacred Games, Guns and Gulaabs, and a few other TV shows are where the OTT giant found success, but Netflix Original movies have been largely disappointing.

The latest disaster to come from Netflix's Hindi original is Jewel Thief, starring Saif Ali Khan, Jaideep Ahlawat, and Nikita Dutta. When you have the talent of Saif and Jaideep, the creators have a wide range of possibilities, as these actors bring versatility and dedication to their roles.

Instead, producer Siddharth Anand and Netflix opted for a heist approach, leading to a messy outcome. Jaideep Ahlawat can literally stand in the corner of any screen and command attention. It's his charm as the villain that makes Jewel Thief bearable, but otherwise, every other aspect of the film outrightly falls flat.

Saif Ali Khan, the thief himself, appears worn out and exhausted onscreen. By the time the final act arrives, audiences are already snoring or could have lost interest. In Jewel Thief, Nikita Dutta, another talented actress, also falls flat. But movies like this will provide a giant platform for Nikita to bag more prominent roles.

After watching Nadaniyaan, it feels like Saif Ali Khan was determined to make audiences forget about his son Ibrahim's performance in his Dharma Productions debut. Some viewers find the movie entertaining and silly, so they are not criticizing it harshly.

Maybe Siddharth Anand was targeting these audiences where they don't want to watch a film with full concentration. Instead, they can scroll through their phones, complete chores, and yet stay connected to a film. This phenomenon, emerging with the rise of OTT platforms, remains unnamed.

If films like Jewel Thief are being called time-pass watches and aren't meant to be taken seriously, the situation might give rise to more lazy writing from screenwriters, especially in Bollywood.