The Bank Job

Review By: Brian DePasquale
BrianDePasquale@TheCinemaSource.com

When you think about it, the heist film is one of the easiest genres to grasp because its structure is so easy to follow. They all adhere to the same general narrative map and watching it unfold can be quite satisfying. Most of the time, however, the process feels like paint-by-numbers. Jason Statham stars in The Bank Job, which is luckily a very different kind of heist film that offers many new elements to the formula and tells a story that hits on all the right notes and fires on all the right cylinders.

Statham plays Terry Leather, a car salesman who is hired by his ex-lover Martine (Saffron Burrows) to rob a large bank in London. Statham sets up a team to coordinate a plan to break into the Lloyds Bank on Baker Street and steal items from the safe deposit boxes inside. What Terry does not know is that Martine has struck a deal with MI5 after being charged with possession of heroin. MI5 wants her to break into the bank and get photographs from box 118. The content of the photos showcases the promiscuous sexual affair of Princess Margaret and the British Royal Family wants to make sure they don’t get into the wrong hands. Who put the photos in the box in the first place? A black militant that goes by the name of Michael X hid them so that he could not be arrested and charged. Otherwise, he would leak the contents in the box.

The plot offers so many different angles and places its characters in so many compromising situations that one would think the whole film would be one giant mess. In a way, The Bank Job is a big mess, but a highly entertaining one. Most of the time it works on a highly sophisticated level that breeds some witty dialogue and some strong editing technique. The characters are not as well developed as one might like, but the thrill of what transpires on screen outweighs the shortcomings.

The Bank Job still contains all the major elements of the heist film. They have the obligatory scene where they make plan. One of the members of the team is suspicious of new members he does not know. The process involves digging a tunnel underneath the bank and a lookout man on guard outside the bank with a walkie-talkie. Of course, the police catch on to what is occurring and the thieves are forced to make a break with the loot. We have seen all this before many times.

Usually, however, the final heist would normally occur toward the end of the film. In The Bank Job, however, the ending of the heist is what begins the third act. Afterwards, Terry Leather starts to learn ...