The Bank Job comes to remind us and demonstrate by example that a British heist movie can be a lot of fun even if it is not of the Guy Ritchie dazzyingly edited variety. The link to Ritchie’s brief but nonetheless key legacy in the genre is there for all to see in the form of Jason Statham, who is, again, eagerly (and successfully) typecast, but The Bank Job, which is set in 1971, looks as if it might have actually been shot in 1970s London. As such it is not about in-your-face editing virtuosity, but about able and elegantly sparing telling of a rather complex story.
The story is handled by screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais as a not-too-implausible fill-in-the-blanks exercise about a daring real-life 1971 bank robbery. What became known as “The Walkie-Talkie Robbery” accidentally made newspaper headlines when a ham-radio operator intercepted the communication by burglars in a branch of Lloyd’s Bank, only for MI5 to brusquely stifle the media coverage on the grounds that it had created a danger to national security.
As the movie’s conspiracy theory of a script would have it, said danger to national security stems from the uncertain fate of pictures of an orgy with a royal princess figuring prominently on them, which otherwise reside in a safety deposit box in the above mentioned bank. This is unbeknownst to grizzled Eastender Terry Leather (Statham) who leads the break-in and who sees it as a good chance to clear his mounting problems with a loan shark who comes knocking ever more menacingly on his door. The break-in itself is suggested by Terry’s old love Martine (Saffron Burrows) and not for old times’ sake either. She is in a tight spot herself and does the bidding of an MI5 agent (Richard Lintern); their hidden agenda involves retrieving the photos that a gangster-come-political-extremist uses for blackmailing. To complicate matters further, another safety deposit box in the vault contains a ledger detailing bribes paid to the police by porn king Lew Vogel (David Suchet) and by the fact that he would go to greater lengths to get what he wants than either the spies or the police.
The plotting gets rather thick at times, but director Roger Donaldson (No Way Out, Cocktail) manages to keep all the balls in the air by opting for a more subdued approach and colour palette. It helps the audience keep their bearings and sample the pleasure of a genre film dominated by intelligent storytelling rather than style. The latter is also helped by the carefully selected cast, which boasts a lot of familiar faces but no genuine household names. The pleasing effect is that all the actors disappear into their characters rather than the other way around as often happens in star-overloaded caper movies like Ocean’s 11. This more workmanlike approach to the genre provides an unexpected context for the inherent humour of the story and it all adds up to a film which is smart, exciting and intelligent in equal parts.
