The Bank Job
a concept in search of an identity
2008-03-07
By Sergio Mims
CAST: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, David Suchet, Daniel Mays, Stephen Campbell Moore, Michael Jipson, James Faulkner, Peter De Jersey, Sharon Maugham
WRITTEN BY: Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais
DIRECTED BY: Roger Donaldson
RATED R
** ½ TWO AND HALF STARS
On the surface of it, the new heist thriller The Bank Job has a lot going for it. It’s very competently made, has an intriguing premise, contains some solid performances and moves at a good clip. Yet the entire endeavor remains stubbornly routine and forgettable. One can easily have a good time watching it but once you hit the street afterward, there’s precious little to remember about it.
All the elements are there, but The Bank Job lacks that certain something that would make it a stand out film. It’s as if the filmmakers, coming up short, called it a day and went home. Even the film’s generic title indicates that something is lacking.
Allegedly based on a true story and set in 1971 London, the film centers around Stratham, a shady car dealer who’s up to his eyes in dept to loan sharks and stuck with a family to feed. His golden opportunity arrives in the form of an ex-flame and model (Burrows) with the plan and blueprints for the robbery of a neighborhood bank. All Stratham and his rag tag crew of second rate thieves and con men (including Faulkner, Mays, Moore and Jipson) have to do is dig a tunnel under the bank from an abandoned store next door up through the bank vault and make off with the booty.
What Stratham and his crew are unaware of is that Burrows, after being arrested on drug rap, has made a deal with another former lover now working for MI5 British intelligence, and is using them to get to something else in one of the bank’s safety deposit boxes. That "something else" is a stash of pictures of Queen Elizabeth II’s notorious sister Princess Margaret in rather naughty "situations." The pictures are being used by a gangster (De Jersey) posing as a black militant, as blackmail to avoid prosecution for the criminal activity he’s currently involved in.
After pulling off the heist, replete with several tense moments, around not only the money and the pictures, but the accounting books linking payoffs to crooked cops by the local porn king (Suchet) and more compromising photos of important politicians caught in the act at an S and M bordello run by a well connected madam (Maugham). Needless to say, Stratham and his gang quickly find themselves in over their heads and end up trying desperately to stay alive with deadly enemies swarming all around them in the form of gangsters, cops both corrupt and clean, British intelligence and the Royal Family.
Director Roger Donaldson (Species, Dante’s Peak, No Way Out, The Recruit) clearly is inspired in look and mood by the brutish British gangster films of the 70’s such as Mike Hodges’ Get Carter, The Long Good Friday and especially the little seen but excellent 1971 gangster heist film Villain (not surprisingly written by the same screenwriters of The Bank Job) with Richard Burton as a gay, grotesque and gleefully sadistic crime lord with a mother fixation. The Bank Job also borrows an important plot point from Sidney Lumet’s 1971 comic paranoid heist movie The Anderson Tapes that leads up to a genuine twist or two in the film. With all these influences competing with each other it’s not surprising that The Bank Job can’t distinguish itself with its own style and tone. Donaldson, who’s a blandly efficient mainstream film director, tries to give Job a nervous energy of its own. Yet, it stubbornly remains, at best, a modestly entertaining film that amiably chugs along with no real impact.
The biggest disappointment though is yet another film that fails to use the great potential of Stratham. In an age of soft, girly man, wishy-washy, male actors, Stratham is the real deal. He’s a hard, tough, cocksure, macho, totally masculine leading man. Like the kind they used to have back in the day. Perhaps one day he’ll be offered films truly deserving of his talent and presence.
Film critic, lecturer and festival consultant Sergio Mims covers all things film from the city that works, Chicago. He is a regular contributor to ebonyjet.com