The Bank Job (2008) * * *

 

Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Starring:  Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Daniel Mays, Stephen Campbell Moore, James Faulkner, Michael Jibson, Peter De Jersey

Not to be confused with The Italian Job (2003), which co-starred Jason Statham, The Bank Job is "based on a true story" about a 1971 London bank heist in which millions of pounds were stolen from safety deposit boxes, but also other little secrets to be used for blackmail.   As The Bank Job opens, we see a threesome involving a high-ranking member of the royal family and a snoop taking incriminating photos of the acts.   The existence of the pictures came to the attention of the British government, who then ordered the bank where the photos were hidden to be robbed.   The thieves could keep the riches, the government just wanted the photos in safe hands.    If you realize the government could cause media coverage of the crime to cease within days of the robbery, then you might wonder why it would go through the trouble of staging a robbery.    Just go into the bank with a warrant of some kind and empty out the contents of the box in question.   No muss, no fuss, but likely no movie either.

The setup of The Bank Job wasn't promising.   Besides a London auto dealership owner named Terry Leather (Statham) being asked by a former flame (Burrows) to rob the bank, we meet a militant Trini named Michael X (De Jersey) who took the photos and will soon blackmail the royal family, members of espionage organizations, dirty cops, a sleazy porno king, and government officials who like to visit S & M brothels.   There is a lot to keep track of, and I worried The Bank Job would slip while trying to keep track of all of these pieces to juggle.    Once the caper gets going, The Bank Job steadies itself into a suspenseful story.   How much of the "based on a true story" part is real and how much is fiction we may never know.

Director Roger Donaldson is no stranger to making solid thrillers (No Way Out, Thirteen Days) and he does so here as well.    A refreshing aspect of The Bank Job is how Statham's character is a true amateur at this bank robbing stuff.   He is a petty criminal at best, someone who wasn't conceived as a master criminal in the womb.   Terry's plan to rent a store two doors down from the bank and burrow under a fast food restaurant using a jackhammer is one which begs he and his crew to get caught.   The vibrations from the jackhammer cause beat cops to stop by.   The group's radio transmissions are picked up on a ham frequency.   A listener calls the police attempting to thwart the theft and Terry narrowly avoids capture. 

The heist is over mid-movie, but Terry now has to evade other parties with secrets of their own hidden in the boxes.   Members of Terry's crew are captured, tortured, or killed and Terry will be next unless he can think his way out of this mess.    The Bank Job doesn't always run like clockwork, but when it does it is an effective caper film with Statham as a steady center.