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| In ‘The Bank Job,’ the heist takes a back seat (B+) | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| By Craig Outhier, Get Out | ||||||||||||||||||||||
| March 6, 2008 | ||||||||||||||||||||||
In fact, director Roger Donaldson’s oily tangle of crooked cops, heroic crooks, black militants, whoring politicos, royal threesomes, secret crypts and smut-peddling gangsters doesn’t really have much in common with the rank-and-file heist flick. It’s more like a revved-up political exposé, with no salacious detail spared. So why the generic title? Well, that’s just the British penchant for ironic understatement, like calling the Atlantic Ocean “the pond” or World War II “that dust-up with the Jerries.” Donaldson (“The World’s Fastest Indian”) and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais — the team behind “Across the Universe” — based the story on a real-life bank robbery in 1970s London, but as to which facts they’ve gussied-up, well, your guess is as good as mine. Action brute Jason Statham — star of “The Transporter” and arguably Hollywood’s most handsome bald person — plays Terry Leather, a used-car dealer with a failing business and a family to feed. Just when all looks lost, the proverbial woman-from-his-past comes to the rescue: Martine (Saffron Burrows), a washed-up model who’s cooked up a scheme to clean out a Lloyd’s of London safety-deposit vault. Reluctantly, Terry gathers a bumbling crew of nonpros, including a one-time porn actor (Daniel Mays from “Atonement”) and faux blue blood con man (James Faulkner). Little do the bank robbers know that the well-dressed stranger pulling Martine’s strings is an MI6 agent (Richard Lintern) who designed the heist to liberate some incriminating photos of Princess Margaret indulging herself in the Caribbean. Seems that a self-styled revolutionary (read: pimp) named Michael X (Peter De Jersey) is sitting on the “portraits,” preventing the Queen’s barristers from having a proper go at him. With so much juicy intrigue, the heist itself doesn’t have to be great, and it’s not. Essentially, Donaldson used it to stage a hexagonal battle of wits involving the robbers, dirty Scotland Yard cops, a blow torch-wielding smut king and yet more dirty photos. The plot doesn’t click together as smoothly as Donaldson’s “No Way Out” (1987), but the director oils it enough to keep the cylinders popping. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a role for Statham if he couldn’t use his fists as well as his wits, and in one brutal discharge of violence, the square-headed actor balances the books. Say what you want about his dramatic skills: Nobody swipe-kicks better. MOVIE REVIEW ‘The Bank Job’ Cast: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Daniel Mays Behind the scenes: Directed by Roger Donaldson, from a script by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais Rated: R (sexual content, nudity, violence and profanity) 112 minutes - GRADE: B+ Contact Craig Outhier by email, or phone (480) 898-5683 |
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