The Bank Job

Feb 29 2008 Evening Chronicle

Dick Clement and Ian Le Frenais, the writing partnership behind The Likely Lads, Porridge and Auf Wiedersehen, Pet, pen this dramatisation of true-life unsolved crime in 1971 London.

The Bank Job pilfers all of the essential ingredients for a heist movie: dodgy geezers, glitches in the master plan, a close call with the rozzers and some earthy dialogue.

Unfortunately, Roger Donaldson’s thriller tunnels through familiar ground and the film is handicapped by a lifeless leading man with all the charisma of a crowbar.

Shady car dealer Terry Leather, (Statham), thinks he has hit the jackpot when model Martine, (Burrows), invites him to take part in a robbery, targeting the safety deposit boxes in Lloyd’s Bank on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road.

The plan is simple: dig a tunnel into the basement of a shop and up through 3ft of reinforced concrete into the bank vault.

Terry assembles his crew - Bambas, (David), Dave, (Mays), Kevin, (Moore) and the Major, (Faulkner) who are concerned about the risks.

Terry and co break into the vault and raid the security boxes, unaware that one box contains compromising photographs of a member of the Royal Family.

They are also oblivious to an amateur radio enthusiast who has picked up their walkie-talkie communications and alerted the police.

The thieves escape with Terry looking forward to a rosy future with his wife and family.

However, when details of the theft hit the news-stands, the gang face the wrath of two of the bank’s influential but corrupt customers.

The Bank Job is a fascinating story of government corruption, cover-ups and criminal daring but the film fails to capture the excitement of what was Britain’s biggest-ever robbery.

(15, 111 mins) Thriller. Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, David Suchet, Stephen Campbell Moore, Keeley Hawes, Alki David, Daniel Mays

SWEARING :: SEX :: VIOLENCE