JUST WATCH ME

The creator of Dexter Morgan, everyone’s favorite homicidal sociopath (Dexter Is Dead, 2015, etc.), dials down the mayhem just enough to introduce a master thief who’s equally proficient at his trade.

Riley Wolfe is bored. Every single one of his heists, even the theft of a 12.5-ton sculpture from Chicago’s Nesselrode Plaza during its dedication ceremony, goes off so seamlessly that there are no new mountains left to scale—almost literally, since Riley is accomplished in parkour as well as larceny. Looking for a suitably impossible challenge, he decides to steal the Daryayeh-E-Noor (Ocean of Light) diamond from among the Iranian crown jewels. The Islamic Republic obligingly makes the job easier by sending the jewels from their impregnable stronghold in Tehran to New York’s Eberhardt Museum, a display site that promises to be exceptionally well armored but not quite as unbreachable. Riley’s plot, as preposterous as it is absorbing, involves multiple disguises, multiple forged artworks supplied by his friend and one-time lover, Monique, and, for better or worse, multiple murders he carries out in between dispensing matter-of-fact bromides like “it doesn’t pay to have friends, because you have to trust them, and that never works out.” But you can’t make headlines without breaking some necks, and Riley, though he takes no particular pleasure in dispatching the unsuspecting souls who stand between him and the Daryayeh-E-Noor, is fully up to the task. About the only thing that casts doubt on the ultimate success of his plan, which pleasingly unfolds with nary a hint of foreshadowing about ways and means, is his devotion to his long-comatose mother, an attachment Chicago FBI agent Frank Delgado, as fanatic as Riley in his way, picks up on after an inexplicable brain wave tells him that Riley’s targeted the diamond, setting in motion a familiar game of cat and mouse, or cat and other cat.

A brashly retro escapist caper reminiscent of Topkapi and just as likely to be filmed.