The Bank Job
If you input the words ‘Jason Statham’ and ‘London crime thriller’ into your brainbox you’ll undoubtedly conjure a well-worn landscape of scalliwags and chancers who hang around railway arches and snooker halls saying things like, “Do me a lemon, tell Tony Binbags ta get a thrupnee-crockett for me ol’ porky bread boat!” But even though Statham plays a second-hand car dealer called Terry Leather, The Bank Job is thankfully light on hackneyed cockneys and the laboured geezerisms Guy Ritchie was so fond of. Instead, the film concentrates all its efforts on telling the true story of a 1971 bank robbery in which an estimated £5million in today’s money was stolen from safe-deposit boxes, making it the biggest haul ever at the time. However, two days after the heist hit the headlines, the story completely disappeared from the papers due to a Government D-Notice. Because of the press gag, the robbery has been all but forgotten and truth behind it remains a mystery. For example, some reports say four men were convicted in 1973, while others, including the film’s producers, say no one was ever arrested. So thirty six years later it falls to writers Dick Clement & Ian Le Frenais (TV’s Porridge and The Likely Lads) to fill in the blanks, and with the help of an insider, they explain the robbery as an intriguing conspiracy motivated by royal scandal, government sleaze and police corruption.
This is a compelling yarn and the writers have been blessed to have a true story of which they’re free to sculpt large parts without fear of seeming inaccurate. But it’s the film’s many other elements that let it down. The usual comic tone of Clement & Le Frenais is sorely missed, the dialogue is flat and occasionally downright terrible: “Terry, I know you’re looking for the one big job that’s gonna make sense of it all!” Meanwhile, director Roger Donaldson, who’s previous work includes Tom Cruise’s barman epic Cocktail, Pierce Brosnan’s volcano romp Dante’s Peak and Kevin Costner’s Cuban Missile Crisis ballyhoo Thirteen Days, stays true to form as competent but uninspired. The Bank Job is more televisual than cinematic and in the climatic scene at Paddington Station the action quickly leaves the majestic concourse only to slip outside to an anonymous alley with a crudely painted ‘Paddington’ sign on the wall. Despite avoiding all the cliché of the recent, over-stylised London crime films, The Bank Job may have gone too far in the other direction -the title alone is blandness manifest. If it weren’t for the plot, The Bank Job would be the biggest crime to hit the multiplex since a tub of popcorn clocked £4. Let’s all go the lobby, let’s all go the lobby…
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