Dark Diamond

Filmmaker Arthur Harari's engrossing and unusual heist thriller centers on Pier (Niels Schneider), a tightly coiled and taciturn young man living on the margins of the criminal world. Rootless and unfocused, Pier believes that his father was badly treated by the latter's brother, Joseph (Hans-Peter Cloos)—driven out of the family's gem business and committed to an asylum for the insane. Something of a cross between Shakespeare's Hamlet and Patricia Highsmith's Thomas Ripley, Pier seeks revenge by insinuating himself into a skeptical Joseph's family at the exact moment when there is a conflict between the older man and his own son over the wisdom of investing in a diamond cutter's business. Pier worms his way into becoming a cutter while also conspiring with a master thief to steal four large gems, an act that will sink Joseph's enterprise. But along the way Pier begins to see his family's history a little differently. A compelling drama, this is recommended. (T. Keogh)