The Bank Job Review

"The Bank Job" reviews

Movie

The Bank Job

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2009-08-10 20:21:39

Rating

3/5

Provider

CinemaSource

Review

The Bank Job is not, as it may appear, a sequel to The Italian Job, but as a tightly wound heist movie in the same vein, it's worth its weight in loot.

Story

Shiny and neatly wrapped, The Bank Job is like a present you missed the first time around. Based on the 1971 Lloyds Bank ''Walky-Talky Robbery'' in the U.K., the film incorporates most of the crime's actual colorful mortals: a porn star, a local druggie, and a British equivalent of Malcolm X. Jason Statham's Terry Leather is the movie's only fictionalized amalgam. Fixing cars as a low-rent bad guy, Terry is propositioned by old friend Martine (Saffron Burrows)--an incandescent, low-lidded local gadfly--to rob a local bank's safety deposit boxes, and split the proceeds. The extra actors start piling up, to mildly confusing effect. Two teams of British spies chase down Terry and Martine, as does a separate band of merry crime-makers. The Bank Job is also a condemnation of behind-the-scenes government collusion with giants in the criminal underground, a commentary on how the U.K. system works, and how absurd it is when something goes awry. The movie's real-life tie-in gives it extra credibility points.

Acting

The Bank Job's characters are a comic book-esque, a little one-dimensional and simple-minded but intentionally so. We're almost not supposed to know too much about their motives. Leading man Statham, a kind of post-The Rock, pre-Matt Damon action hero, is above-average--though he isn't likely to win Oscars any time soon. A good actor, Statham seems to be most comfortable in genre or ensemble flicks that make him center stage, such as his work in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and The Italian Job. But can certainly handle the chores if needed, as he did for The Transporter and Crank--action movies that show his physical abilities. Burrows, an accomplished U.K. actress and former model, is a lively mess, a kaleidoscope like vision of a Factory Girl-like kook. The supporting characters are nicely pitched Brits.

Direction

Director Roger Donaldson is a mid-sized American icon of cinema the past 25 years, directing low-brow but memorable movies such as Cocktail, Thirteen Days, Species and The Bounty. He helms the story with a veteran's ease, with several scenes framed like a '70s-style British flick. Donaldson kicks The Bank Job into and out of gear several times, but the movie really works best when the speed picks up. Smart banter abounds--between the spies, the dim-witted criminals and old flames Terry and Martine. Conversation lulls the movie at some points, but the intrigue is welcomed. Even an intense torture scene is shot cleverly, much like the Reservoir Dogs ear-cutting scene: little blood and maximum suspense. The Bank Job delivers the goods.

Bottom Line

Hollywood.com rated this film 3 stars.

Movie

The Bank Job

Author

anonymous

Date reviewed

2008-02-25 08:59:33

Provider

Review

The Bank Job is a caper thriller based, in the carefully coded words of so many films, on a true story. Just how much of it is true is another matter, but it tells the story of an infamous 1971 Baker Street bank job for which no prosecutions were ever brought, the whole affair being squashed by government "D Notice" (a banning order brought by security services). It tells the affairs of several well-known characters from the early '70s. Among them, of course, is Princess Margaret, sister to the Queen and at this time enjoying something of a wild phase, hanging out with The Rolling Stones, getting divorced from Lord Snowdon, taking off to Mexico with Roddy Llewellyn and, it's alleged here, being snapped in a manner unbecoming of a royal. The photos have wound up in the hands of radical black activist Michael X, who's deposited them in a safe deposit box, hoping he can blackmail the government into leaving him alone.

But his plan backfires. Terry (Jason Statham) is recruited by mysterious forces (oh, OK then, by MI5) to break into the bank and help himself to the contents of the safe deposit boxes. He assembles a tasty little team of specialists, does the job, only to find out it's hard for a villain to make a dishonest living when the intelligence services are the ones pulling your strings. In this respect it's a very conservative film, the notion of the "good" bank job being a staple of films right up to Spike Lee's recent Inside Man. Written by the generally reliable team of Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais (Porridge, Auf Weidersehen Pet), it's a likeable straightforward caper movie in which the bad guys wear suits and good guys wear masks. The sheer scale of dodgy goods contained in those boxes is mind-boggling. More than one hundred owners never came forward to itemise their contents, while those who do (David Suchet as porn baron Lew Vogel) are more interested in contacting Terry and his gang directly than going through the police.

At a time when outwardly sensible people cling to the belief that the Royal Family are assassinating their own, none of this seems too far-fetched. Clement and Le Frenais have no need to concoct ludicrous twists, since the details of the story do it for them. They do, however, play it rather safe. The Bank Job is arrives as a kind of period piece, an Italian Job that reaches into the heart of the establishment and, rather than it rip it out, blows a loud raspberry.