The Gold, on Paramount+

The Securitas cash depot heist remains the UK’s largest cash robbery in history. Showtime took that one on with the multi-part doc Catching Lightning. The Brinks-Mat heist was the largest gold score. If you own British jewelry crafted after the 1983 robbery, it is thought you most likely have some of the boosted bullion mixed into your bling. Obviously, it was a high-profile crime, but the investigation broke somewhat new ground pursuing those who fenced, smelted, laundered, and invested the illegal fruits of the crime. The investigation and pursuit of the guilty parties are solid grist for creator-writer Neil Forsyth’s six-part true crime drama The Gold, produced by the BBC, which premieres tomorrow on Paramount Plus.

Brian Boyce was a legend at Scotland Yard for his service in Northern Ireland. Initially, leading the Brinks-Mat special task force looks and feels like a demotion, but he soon realizes the case might encompass some of the corrupt elements within the Metropolitan Police he has long resented. Nicki Jennings and Tony Brightwell are not part of that clique, which is why Boyce keeps the “Flying Squad” members on the case.

Stumbling upon the bullion was a happy surprise for Micky McAvoy and his accomplices, but they were not prepared to move it. Fortunately, he knew Kenneth Noye and John Palmer, dodgy gold dealers with a long history of criminal associations, who developed a method to smelt off the serial numbers and create a fraudulent paper trail, to sell the gold back into the market.

Noye also has a few semi-secret allies. He happens to be a Freemason, as is Neville Carter, a highly placed cop in Metropolitan HQ. Thanks to their uniformed brothers, Noye has been able to operate with impunity throughout his career. Carter is also a link to fellow freemason Edwyn Cooper, a social-climbing lawyer, who married into an impeccable establishment family. Cooper will set up the shell companies, the Swiss accounts, and the real estate investments, but he will never directly touch any of the cash.

Everyone should be insulated from everything except their own link in the chain, which makes the case particularly frustrating for Boyce’s honest cops to investigate, especially with the UK’s minimal early 1980s bank reporting regulations. That makes the step-by-step detective work to reveal the conspiracy so fascinating.

However, that Freemasonry business is no joke. At one point Boyce literally calls the Freemasons within the Metropolitan force the “hidden hand.” It all sounds very weird, almost like the Birchers discussing the Council on Foreign Relations. Yet, apparently, this somewhat resonates in the UK. In the late 1990s, Labour Home Secretary led a movement to force Freemasons to disclose their membership before when up for judicial or police appointments.

Despite the conspiratorial tone, the procedural elements are highly compelling. Regardless of who belonged to what lodge, the major developments of the case largely follow the historical record, including all the criminal trials depicted.

Stratton: Dominic Cooper in Her Majesty’s Naval Service

When Yanks think of Brits, we often form a mental picture of Benny Hill or Are You Being Served?, but some of the world’s fiercest warfighters are in the Queen’s service. Sometimes their own lingo doesn’t do them any PR favors. The Special Boat Service sounds pretty pedestrian, but they hang with the U.S. Navy SEALs any day. In fact, John Stratton is so frequently paired up with a SEAL colleague, he also becomes a friend. His death leaves the British commando seething for vengeance, but he will focus on foiling a catastrophic terrorist plot in Simon West’s Stratton (trailer here) which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Stratton and his soon-to-be late SEAL pal Marty Sturgess were supposed to swim in and out of an Iranian germ warfare facility, safely securing their double-secret super-strain, but the mission specs are wrong at nearly every juncture. It is like someone knew they were coming. That would be Grigory Barovsky, a rogue Russian, previously assumed dead. He massacred the Iranians and framed the Brits and Yanks. Stratton just barely escaped, but Sturgess is not so lucky.

Naturally, his next SEAL partner, Hank Monroe, happens to be an old friend of Sturgess and rather hot-headed in the way we Yanks get. However, Stratton can keep him focused on the immediate tasks, like recovering the ultra-lethal pathogen, ferreting out the traitor in MI6, and generally killing a bunch of terrorist scum.

Stratton is a highly appealing throwback to 1980s action movies, like The Delta Force, Navy SEALs, and Ffolkes, while also nicely representing the “Special Relationship” between the U.S. and UK with Stratton’s partnership with a Navy SEAL comrade. Dominic Cooper is impressively steely as Stratton. He definitely overshadows Austin Stowell’s Monroe, but the film is titled after his character, so what do you expect? Regardless, Stowell has a gee whiz earnestness that suits the film and character well enough. However, the best developed relationship and strongest chemistry is that shared by Cooper and Gemma Chan as the by-the-book mission controller, Aggy.

Admittedly, Thomas Kretschmann looks a little weary playing the villainous Barovsky, which is why the German reporter in A Taxi Driver was such a nice change of pace for him. Connie Nielsen and Derek Jacobi add some class to the joint as Stratton’s M-like boss Sumner and his Derek Jacobi-like dad Ross.

There are several neatly executed meat-and-potatoes action scenes and a number of Middle Eastern terrorists get their comeuppance in a manner worthy of 24. West is an action veteran, who clearly helms with a steady hand. There is nothing pretentious or sucker-punchy about the film, which is why it is such a breath of fresh air. Highly recommended for action fans, Stratton opens this Friday (1/5) in LA at the Arena CineLounge and also releases day-and-date on iTunes.

Spawn of Saddam: The Devil’s Double

Somewhere in the lower depths of Hell, Saddam and Uday Hussein are watching this film as they slowly roast on their spits. Graphically dramatizing the sadist brutality and drug-fueled hedonism of Saddam Hussein’s ruling family, Lee Tamahori’s The Devil’s Double (trailer here) opens this Friday in New York, after leaving Sundance audiences completely slack-jawed earlier this year.

Latif Yahia had the profound misfortune to resemble Saddam’s psychotic son Uday. Even more despised than his despot father, Uday recruited Yahia to serve as his double. It is not like the Iraqi officer is given any choice in the matter. He could either relinquish his identity to serve as Uday’s public doppelganger or his family would be tortured to death in Abu Ghraib. He knows the junior Hussein means it only too well. As his first tutorial on being Uday, Yahia is forced to watch videotape of his shadow-self at work as the head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, raping and tormenting the nation’s athletes. It is a disturbing scene, but Double is just getting started.

Beginning during the Iran-Iraq War and continuing through the first Gulf War, Double forces viewers to witness Uday’s crimes up-close-and-personal. We watch as he abducts underage school girls straight off the street and violently rapes newlywed brides still in their wedding dresses. Truly, there is really no perversion too heinous for him.

Obviously, being a party to such crimes, albeit against his will, takes a profound emotional toll on Yahia. While his assignment progressively eats away at his soul, Yahia embarks on a dangerous affair with Sarrab, Uday’s favorite amongst his women on-call. Yet, even without their assignations, it is clear life in the House of Saddam is always brutish and short-lived.

It is one thing to intellectually concede the crimes of the Husseins, but it is quite another to confront it in such visceral and immediate terms. To its credit, Double waters down nothing. Nor does it indulge in any anti-American cheap shots. This is about Uday (and to a much lesser extent Saddam) Hussein’s crimes and Tamahori and screenwriter Michael Thomas offer them absolutely no mitigating circumstances or justifications. Indeed, the extent it depicts the Iraqi Olympic Committee as an extension of Saddam’s secret police will be a genuine revelation for many. (Though no fan of the Husseins, it is important to note the real life Yahia is also a vocal critic of the CIA and Operation Iraqi Freedom.) Yet, Tamahori never neglects the thriller aspects of Yahia’s story, keeping the tension amped up to Mountain Dew levels throughout.

In a truly intense dual role that will probably take years of analysis to recover from, Dominic Cooper gives a career-making performance as Uday and Yahia. In terms of mannerisms (and behavior), his Uday bears a strong resemblance to Pacino in Scarface. Twitchy and erratic, he is an unsettling presence, even when apparently at rest. By contrast, Cooper portrays Yahia as a serious slow burner, outraged and slowly deadened by the atrocities surrounding him. Providing further seasoning, the French Ludivine Sagnier is at her most sensual ever as Sarrab, far eclipsing her sex appeal in films like Mesrine and Chabrol’s A Girl Cut in Two.

No, Double is not a subtle film. Likely making Double even less palatable to critics, Tamahori and cinematographer Sam McCurdy rendered the film in a wickedly slick, visually dynamic style reminiscent of the 1990’s glory years of Michael Mann and Tony Scott. Without question, this is a major production, with the talented design team perfectly recreating the ostentation and tackiness of Saddam’s palaces.

Predicting unfavorable reviews for Double from politicized critics is a pretty short limb to climb out on. Its implications will threaten many world views. However, it constitutes bold, bravura filmmaking on several levels and features a truly riveting dual performance from Cooper. Highly and enthusiastically recommended, it opens this Friday (7/29) in New York at the AMC Empire 25 and Union Square 13.