'The Bank Job’ steals success

By Nick Knittel, Contributor

April 15, 2008 | noon

“The Bank Job,” begins simply: Terry (Jason Statham, “Transporter 2”) is a down-on-his-luck car salesman with a mountain of debt. When he is approached by old flame Martine (Saffron Burrows, “Boston Legal”) to pull off a perfect bank robbery, he is naturally interested but reluctant. Terry’s crew of merry men have never pulled off a heist this big before, and the nature of just how Martine got this information in the first place is a little too secretive. However, the allure is too great and before long, preparations are being made and a plan is set in motion.

It should come as no surprise, then, that things are not quite as they seem. Turns out the robbery is being directed by the shadowy upper echelons of the British government, led by the roguish Tim (Richard Lintern, “The Calling”), in order to retrieve a number of documents and photographs pointing to a royal family sex scandal and the bizarre fetishes of many elected officials. When the documents wind up in Terry’s hands things get very crazy, very quickly. Soon, Terry and Martine find themselves chased by crooked cops, straight cops, government agents, a radical revolutionary and the London underworld. Talk about hitting the wrong place at the wrong time.

The “twist,” as it were, is that the plot is based off a true story of four men who tunneled into a bank in London, stole three million dollars and skedaddled. The money was never retrieved, and the people were never captured. Instead, a government-issued gag order was placed over all news outlets, and within a matter of days a heist that (according to the film) rivaled that of the Great Train Robbery was quickly forgotten. The producers hope to present the “truth” of what really went on for the heist, and while that is admirable and all, it is hard to really determine what sort of legitimacy and truth there is under such a slick, polished surface like this film. The first thought is entertainment, and the second is education. This is clear even in the film’s promotion, the poster conjuring up images of a brazen Steve McQueen sitting in a car, eyeing the populous, oozing liquid awesome. It is that kind of thing.

Whatever the marketing has decided to target, “The Bank Job” is not an action movie or even a heist movie per se but a carefully crafted and extremely enjoyable thriller. The steal is not even the focal point of the film but rather the consequences. The fallout from what has been taken and the gradual realization that something is about to go down is there on every frame, or at least weighing heavily on the characters' actions. This creates a much more interesting movie than the suave, super agents in something like “Oceans 11,” and really, the two cannot even be compared. One uses the heist as a film, and the other uses the heist as a component to the film, and that leads to two very different stories.

It is hard to call a movie like “The Bank Job” a symbol of evolution for Jason Statham. The plus is that there are not any flying jump kicks, nor is there any kind of acrobatic, somersaulting, CGI-assisted battle royal near the end, but there is a nice throwback to Statham’s burgeoning days under Guy Ritchie’s direction in “Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels” and “Snatch.” He showed then that he can play the leading man (or the exalted supporting player) with a grace that does not require punching someone in the head. It is so nice to see that kind of return.

“The Bank Job” plays out very well on the whole, but its simple title relays a kind of message throughout the film, one that reads like a five-dollar hooker: I’m a good deal, but deep down, something is just missing. That is to say, there is a point where a girl is cute but not hot, a pair of boxers snug but maybe too tight. Likewise, “The Bank Job” comes off as reaching a point of decency instead of superbness. It is hard to tell where this weakness lays its head. It feels as though director Roger Donaldson just barely missed the mark, relying on a little too much restraint instead of storytelling. But sometimes a film is just a film, and perhaps the idea of just being fun is something in and of itself.

---

“The Bank Job”

Speakeasy Rating: B+

Running Time: 110 minutes

MPAA Rating: R for language