Masterplan: When the Mona Lisa Meets a Masala Template

Thomas Vincent seems to have watched one average Indian heist movie, nodded wisely and said, "Let me try this in Paris." The target is the Mona Lisa, from the Louvre. Come on, is this even a heist?

History says it can be done, once. Vincenzo Peruggia, a former Louvre handyman, walked out with her on 21 August 1911 and kept her at home until she was traced to Florence in 1913. 

Back then, the museum had about 200 guards for 400 rooms. 

Today, a recent audit reportedly found cameras in only 25% of the rooms in one wing. So the real question is not how to steal the Mona Lisa. It is why this took 110 minutes.

Enter Roger Cavendish (Stanley Tucci), a legendary thief who recruits two local crooks, one a cyber criminal and the other a small-bomb specialist who can open walls like tin cans. 

They break into a house to rob it, and he is already sitting inside, calmly waiting. 

Like every Tamil hero in a climax scene, he announces that he is their biological father, and he even has the medical reports. Not a DNA test in sight, but a file in hand! The kids are promptly inducted into the "Family Heist" programme.

Roger then shares the plan with Chiara (Simona Tabasco) and Jay (Victor Belmondo) in great, brrrr, detail, and we wait for D-day. 

Jay finally gets closer to the lady than anyone should. His stunts reminded me of NBK across a hundred Telugu films, where gravity is merely a suggestion.

And the getaway? 

Just like Rajinikanth's Linga, directed by KS Ravikumar, the painting is tied to a black hot-air balloon that floats away into the night and lands exactly where Chiara has decided. 

Why do Indian heroes always trust balloons and trains? Nobody knows.

There is one catch. Is Roger playing a trick on his newfound kids, or are the kids smarter than the old man? The film answers this with a climax dumber than I could have imagined. 

I clapped, but only for the audacity.

Tucci, as we have seen in so many films, does his job impeccably. The man could read a telephone directory and make it sound like a Michelin menu. 

Chiara and Jay, however, neither blend as characters nor as foster siblings. They have the chemistry of filter coffee and cold cola. 

The screenplay is one big "duh", and I wonder what Vincent's favourite puff was while shooting in Paris. Of course, much of it is only a setting and not the real thing.

A weak start, perhaps, for Prime Video's first Franco-Italian collaboration. 

But hey, nobody got hurt. Except logic.