At the risk of sounding like a suckup, but Disney+ is good at sending shows and films to preview. The newest of those gifts on my inbox being for The Jewel Thief. I’ve never heard of this documentary. But my interest went from lukewarm to slightly warmer when I fidocvered that the documentary’s director is Landon Van Soest, who also directed For Ahkeem. Ahkeem is about a Black teenager who becomes a mother during the Michael Brown shooting. Thief may have some similairties with Ahkeem‘s main subject but they’re more different thn they are similar. This newer documentary covers decades in the life of Gerland Blanchard, a Canadian man whose biggest ‘accomplishment’ eventually comes. But for now, the film reenacts his escape and capture that gets the American government to deport him back to Canada.

Most people may find deportation to be their teachable moment but not Blanchard, who eventually ingratiates himself into the life of European socialites and steals the Sisi Star, a piece of jewellery under the previous possession of an Austro-Hungarian Empress. All of this is technically interesting, even that interest comes from a morbid place. Thankfully, The Jewel Thief doesn’t double down on this morbidity. Pop documentaries from a few other streaming services are guilty of such things. The documentary shows its viewers one reenactment or interview segment after another. The more we see of those, the more it feels as if it’s pulling towards the other direction. Some of these interviews capture the detectives who helped temproarily put Blanchard in prison for stealing the jewel. But it’s as if the documentary doesn’t want us to have an interest on those men.

But thankfully, the camera comes back to Blanchard, the kind of person that viewers may hate to like. Thief shows him both during his younger years and him during the present day, as documentaries like this do. Back then, he’s the nerd turned bad guy, the kind of guy that women and some men may not admit to liking and today, he seems like a regular guy. The documentary comments on these versions of their main subject. The kind of person that the justice system forgives not just because he’s a white man but because he was smaller than most men. Someone who can fool the system into thinking that he’s not dangerous. He’s the kind of man who can participate in documentaries, the kind who can slip away because he’s not a ‘problem’.

Watch The Jewel Thief on Disney+.