The Bank Job

What’s the Story?

"You've always been looking for the big score," Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) tells Terry Leathers (Jason Statham), "the one that makes sense of everything." And so, in THE BANK JOB, Terry -- like many movie crooks before him -- is lured into a scheme (inspired by a real-life 1971 heist) to rob a London bank. With a crew comprised of both friends and specialists, he tunnels from a nearby shop into the bank's time-locked vault, where they find a trove of safety deposit boxes. It's only after finishing the job that Terry learns the heist was actually instigated by a spy tasked with retrieving one box's contents: pornographic photos of British politicians and aristocrats (including a royal princess). Now he has to outmaneuver government agents, gangsters, and both corrupt and good cops.

Is It Any Good?

Though Terry probably believes himself when he tells his wife that "All I want is to get out of the game," he's also plainly thrilled by challenge, the chance to beat the system one more time. But he's surprised by the ferocity of his adversaries, who have much more at stake than he does. These include not only the politicians caught with their pants down, but also a gangster who keeps cops on his payroll and a militant who's used the princess photos to blackmail his way out of a prison sentence. As Roger Donaldson's movie keeps track of all these plot strands at once, it becomes more procedural than compelling.

Meanwhile, per heist movie formula, Terry's bad behavior is offset by the even worse behavior of his opponents. Theft, deception, and adultery don't look so terrible compared to murder and torture, especially since the robbers seem like they're having fun, trusting and kidding one another in ways that the generally humorless assortment of gangsters, pimps, revolutionaries, and authorities can't manage. Statham is surely charismatic, but the film is finally defined by its thinly drawn characters (the stereotypical militant, the hypocritical politicos) and by-the-numbers plot.