The Bank Job

2008 "The true story of a heist gone wrong... in all the right ways."
7.2| 1h51m| R| en| More Info
Released: 07 March 2008 Released
Producted By: Atlas Entertainment
Country: United States of America
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: http://thebankjobmovie.com
Synopsis

Terry is a small-time car dealer trying to leave his shady past behind and start a family. Martine is a beautiful model from Terry's old neighbourhood who knows that Terry is no angel. When Martine proposes a foolproof plan to rob a bank, Terry recognises the danger but realises this may be the opportunity of a lifetime. As the resourceful band of thieves burrows its way into a safe-deposit vault at a Lloyds Bank, they quickly realise that, besides millions in riches, the boxes also contain secrets that implicate everyone from London's most notorious underworld gangsters to powerful government figures, and even the Royal Family. Although the heist makes headlines throughout Britain for several days, a government gag order eventually brings all reporting of the case to an immediate halt.

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Reviews

FuzzyTagz If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.
Forumrxes Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.
Brendon Jones It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.
Scarlet The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
ChocOrange A top-notch script, coupled with an excellent cast and great directing makes the most of this factually based film.Gripping from the start, it continues weaving its complex web of corruption in early 1970's London right through to the end.The excellent script from Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais just goes to show they should do more film scripts. The perfect balance between a gritty thriller and the occasional lighthearted comment or moment.It's rare to find such a well crafted heist movie that doesn't rely on superficial gloss. Hollywood should take note.A cracking film that's well worth your time.
inspectors71 Roger Donaldson's sharp, suspenseful, and very human crime drama, based on, apparently, a true story of what some minor criminals find in the safety deposit boxes in a small bank, delivers what is critical for a heist movie to succeed:1. Everyone is a real, flesh and scars human 2. Violence is usually threatened and almost never graphic 3. Decency and degeneracy can walk hand in hand 4. If the good guys win, it's going to be at a terrible costI just saw another Donaldson picture a few months ago, The November Man. Remember how I appreciated the line delivered by Pierce Brosnan to his protégé, something like, "You can either be a human or a taker of human life; you can't be both." The November Man was a more standardized action flick, but the moral choice Brosnan's trainee has to make sends the quality of the movie up 1/2 dozen notches right away.In The Bank Job, Donaldson is able to convey the vulnerability felt by many of the primary and secondary characters. There's real fear on the faces of the guys at MI-5 (or is it MI-6; I never know). Jason Statham (who turns in a darn-good performance here) is torn between benefiting his family or destroying it. I don't know all the other actors, but everyone of them, as I said before, is so real, so smart, craven and foolish. The heart and soul of The Bank Job is in its ability to convince the audience that what they are seeing is plausible, maybe even real. When an up-and-coming spook spots a young woman he sent on an undercover mission in the Caribbean, covered in a shallow grave, he doesn't act tough. He forces back his emotions, and then orders the local authorities to burn the bad guy's house to the ground. If this guy can hang on to his career, he's going to be a holy terror in the British Intelligence community. Except for the usual problem of deciphering Statham's thickened and mumbling accent, and the less-than-a-clear-mix musical soundtrack for 1971, I found nothing to complain about here. If you find The Bank Job at your library, in a bin at Wal-Mart, or on Netflix, I would suggest you drop everything for the evening to watch a fine piece of restrained film-making. One of the message boarders commented that, if this had been made in the US, what made it so good would have died almost instantly. How true.
tomsview As far as crime caper movies go, this is right up there with the best.The film has the added conviction that often comes with stories based on real events such as "The French Connection" and "Munich" to name a couple. The story takes place in 1970. A gangster, Michael X (Peter de Jersey) has some compromising photographs of a member of the royal family. He uses these as insurance against prosecution for his crimes. Tim Everett (Richard Lintern) of MI5 is ordered to get the negatives, but he is told to use unorthodox means so as not to incriminate the government. Through Martine Love (Saffron Burrows), a woman Everett has rescued from a drugs charge, a small-time criminal, Terry Leather (Jason Statham), is brought in to do the robbery. This entails tunnelling beneath two shops to get to the bank. Terry pulls together a team including a tunnelling expert. The icing on the cake in "The Bank Job" is the bank job itself. The robbery sequence is long, full of detail, and packed with tension. The film was directed by Roger Donaldson who had remade "The Getaway". Although Alec Baldwin didn't eclipse Steve McQueen in that effort, Donaldson's action sequences, which included a similar robbery, were a notch above Peckinpah's. Donaldson can also handle intense human drama as he proves here and in films such as the brilliant "The Bounty". The story is full of lewd lords and crooked cops, and the plot twists in all directions as other characters are drawn in whose secrets have also been exposed. Although the film starts with a light touch it becomes progressively darker as retribution comes from all directions. One of the aggrieved is brothel owner Lew Vogel (David Suchet) who makes a point that sums up a lot of the characters in the film. As his associates are about to work over one of Terry's friends with what looks like a sand blaster, he says, "I have a very jaundiced view of life. From what I see most of it is corrupt, venal and vile, and I'm just saying this so you know that I don't have a better nature to appeal to or a compassionate streak"."The Bank Job" has a great cast. Jason Statham is perfect as Terry and Saffron Burrows adds class to any movie she is in. This is definitely one of Roger Donaldson's best. He and the cast created believable characters in a movie that is absorbing from start to finish.
ADF When money spoils a good story.I know little about screenplay or script writing despite being on the fringe of TV and film production for six years but I do recall how financiers were more concerned with ensuring a profit than they were with the story. I mean the story is the whole point of it, isn't it? Sell them on the story and offer them good actors and direction to loosen the purse strings. More than once though they interfered at the eleventh hour and what would have been a gem was turned to mud instead.I watched The Bank Job with Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows. From my own very small involvement in its production I know that it was a film based on fact, so I was disappointed that the films financiers felt they had to completely alter those facts. The matter is no longer buried by the Official Secrets Act so they have no excuse. Robbing a bank to save Princess Margaret's reputation gave them a chance to throw a bit of sex and scandal in, but the real story was that in one of those safety deposit boxes was a Cold War intelligence coup so great that once handed to the authorities by the robbers, not only was all the evidence against the gang quietly destroyed but so were their previous criminal records AND they were allowed to keep everything else they had stolen. The investigation carried on (in name only) so as not to tip off the Russians.I think I know which would have made the better film and I am pretty sure the writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ('Porridge' : 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' : 'Lovejoy') knew it too. Once again the money men got it wrong.They were filming Jason's garage in Southwark, beside the Thames a stones throw from the old Fire Station used in 'London's Burning' Ironically only the location manager and myself knew that they were making a movie about tunneling to commit a robbery of a million or so pounds and they were in reality stood quite literally fifty feet above two billion in gold as the location was across the narrow road from what was back then a massive covert vault.From time to time local residents may object to the presence of a film unit but this was the only one where one used a forklift truck to attack the portable generator.