31 July 2008
The Bank Job
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Review
by Julie Rigg
Directed by Roger Donaldson, this film is, we're told, based on a true story about a bank robbery which netted more than the Great Train Robbery; around three million pounds, a lot of dosh back in l971.
Jason Statham plays Terry, a small-time London lad who operates a car dealership. Saffron Burrows plays old school pal Martine, who comes to him with a story about a bank whose security has been turned off for a week or so while it's updated. She wants him to get together a group of villains, tunnel in and rob it.
But Martine is actually being fed the info by a guy from MI5, or possibly six, who is very interested in the contents of one particular safety deposit box. It may, we are led to believe, contain sexually compromising photographs of a royal personage.
Other people are interested too, including a Soho porn king, and a man calling himself Michael X -- a West Indian who talks the black power but runs a string of prostitutes.
All of which makes for a very interesting, and extremely entertaining heist film. How much of this story is true, I don't know, but it is true that press reporting of the 1971 robbery of Lloyds bank in Baker Street was supressed by a government D notice. And eventually the law did catch up with Michael X.
Director: Roger Donaldson
Cast: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore, Daniel Mays, James Faulkner, Alki David, Michael Jibson, Georgia Taylor, Richard Lintern, Peter Bowles, Alistair Petrie, Hattie Morahan
Producer: Steve Chasman, Charles Roven
Script: Dick Clement, Ian Le Fresnais
Cinematographer: Michael Coulter
Editor: John Gilbert
Music: J. Peter Robinson
Running time: 112
Australian distributor: Paramount
Language: English
Classification: MA15+
