"We're not bank robbers, Martine."
“The Bank
Job” has the requisite stuff of a good bank heist movie: a beautiful woman and
interesting thieves. Based on an actual 1971 robbery in London, this one has its
tongue nicely in its cheek. Both thieves and lawmen are an incompetent lot, a
twist that allows us to enjoy the heist in a state of minimal tension. Main
problem, though not a fatal one: it doesn’t know what it wants to be.
The beautiful
woman is Martine Love (Saffron Burrows), an ex-model with a spectacular set of
angled bones. She is approached by her sometime lover Tim (Richard Lintern), a
ranking up and comer in MI-5 who asks her to assemble a team for a robbery of
Lloyds Bank. Her team can keep all the cash and walk away if they will just
deliver the contents of Box #118. Martine recruits her team through Terry
Leather (Jason Statham), hapless owner of an auto repair shop who protests
“we’re not bank robbers, Martine,” but caves in to her response, “You’ve always
been looking for the big score, the one that makes sense of everything.” Terry
assembles a gaggle of nice guy incompetents and puts Eddie (Michael Jibson) on a
neighboring roof with a walkie talkie for relaying the unfolding events on the
street below.
From two
doors away, they tunnel their bumbling way beneath Chicken Inn, whose dishes
rattle from the jackhammer vibrations, and into the Lloyds vault while Eddie’s
reports from the roof are picked up by a ham radio operator who summons the
police. This is technological 1971, remember, and the cops can do no better than
to send their cars to every bank on Baker Street looking for Eddie and his
walkie talkie.
At this point
the thieves do not know that their real goal is the photographic record of
Princess Margaret’s bed play in safety deposit box #118; nor does anyone realize
that another box contains the ledgers and pictures of London’s leading porn king
whose customers include the highest players in the British establishment,
including Tim’s superiors at MI-5.
One of the
nicest surprises is that Terry, the head burglar, is an honorable friend and a
family man whose love of his wife and children lies at the core of everything he
does. From these dueling motivations, Actor Jason Statham builds Terry into an
endearing character.
On the
downside, the filmmakers saw fit to throw in a horrific torture scene that is
absolutely unnecessary in a film that is basically a lighthearted caper. The
sting of these scenes drains the air from the high flying balloon. London’s
establishment has their hats handed to them in a series of sex scandals that
take us for an ugly walk through that seamy and popular part of the culture. But
whenever we are in the company of Martine and her team of basically good hearted
bumblers we root for them to make their modest dreams come true.
Copyright (c) Illusion