A documentary’s success should be gauged by its ability to reveal previously invisible layers within our cultures, and, most importantly, to translate regionally exotic anecdotes into a common human language.  Coincidentally, Smash and Grab: The Story of The Pink Panthers, does just this. 

Havana Marking, this film's director, continues beating at the iron heart of her obsession with another story about compromised codes of morality that arise from the rubble of what international relations experts refer to as "failed" states.  Much like her film Afghan Star, that utilized an exported permutation of the Fox Network's American Idol to  articulate the arrested development of a nation perpetually unfolding itself into a history plagued by civil unrest and outside intervention, Smash and Grab extracts a similar metaphor from the former Yugoslav republics.

With nearly a billion dollars worth of stolen diamonds to its credit, the aptly named Pink Panther mafia has been able to craft a globally resonating folklore of a greater or equal value.  And with two vibrant accounts told firsthand by former Panthers through alluring Slavic accents and an acid-rock filtered aesthetic that both masks their true identities and, perhaps, represents the superficiality of the international jewel market that they so well exploit, Marking’s film manages to delicately promenade along the border of sensationalism and a dispassionate newscast.  

The film wastes no time in positing Western-led economic sanctions placed upon Serbia in the late 1990’s as the causal link that set into motion the contagion that is “smash and grab.”  More or less as an existential exhalation than salivating money lust, the Pink Panthers’ narrative mimics the archetype set forth by Robin Hood in associating their drive toward brash theft as a response to capitalist greed and to their exclusion from the positive benefits of globalization.  The film goes so far to even include field interviews with common Serbians who speak of the Panthers and their activities with prideful joy, insinuating a dialectic of stealing back from those that stole from us.

In turn, the sporadic use of actual surveillance footage from a number of their hyper-paced heists, and interviews with a cadre of international policing organizations, too, reveal a literal and metaphorical second perspective of these near ‘excusable’ crimes:  pistol-wielding, masked assailants huddling jewelry store employees paralyzed in horror;  and a pair of Mercedes sedans bursting through the storefront of an upscale diamond retailer that lay inside of a populated Dubai mega-mall.

But, fortunately, the inability of the filmmaker to present a visually cohesive film -- as  she juggles one-on-one interviews, cable news footage, ‘80s era Yugoslav tourism propaganda, and a quasi-baked effects scheme and score -- works in the film’s favor in that the disjointed style happens to represent well the divisive moral dilemma that the Panthers crimes and ideology present.  Even the dilemma is eerily outlined by a sultry female ex-Panther as she intimates that her diamond-laden comrades are amongst the most religious folks she has ever encountered -- eternally plagued by residual guilt and compulsive prayers of penance. 

It is as though the Pink Panthers possess an alternative code of morality that empowers them to perform unthinkable acts of theft as long as they feel guilty about it in hindsight.  And, in this, we find the answer to the question of why this film lingers well after its approximate running time.

Author Bio:
William Eley is a contributing writer at Highbrow Magazine.

Photo of diamonds: Swamibu (Wikipedia Commons).