film: Bank Job

Bank Job stars Jason Statham as a retro, grizzled, cockney criminal. Wait, wasn’t that Crank? Or, sorry, wasn’t that Lock Stock? Perhaps I’m mistaken, maybe it was Snatch? Poor old Jason is getting a little type cast these days, but I suspect he finds it hard to complain when he gets to spend his days filming with Keeley Hawes and Saffron Burrows. Can he pull off a decent picture as well as his heist?

Jason Statham plays Terry, a car dealer with a dodgy past and newfamily. But when Saffron Burrows’ Martine suggests a bank job, Terry can’t resist. What Terry and his crew don’t realize is Martine isn’t after money. The cunning wench is also after some spicy pictures of the Royal Family’s Princess Margaret which will embroil the crew in a web of corruption that includes the British government and London’s criminal underworld.

Over the last decade, British film has been drawn to crime capers and hardnosed criminals like bears to a honeypot. Think Sexy Beast, Snatch, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrrels, Revolver and Layer Cake. (Mmm cake) Fortunately for kickboxing roughboy actor Jason Statham (tough as nails) this means a lot of work. Not only was he in Lock Stock and Snatch, but he was also in the American remake of The Italian Job and the brutal Vinnie Jones football slash vehicle Mean Machine.

Now here Jason is again in The Bank Job, but unlike his earlier films, I’m afraid to report that this one doesn’t hit the target. The problem is, The Bank Job doesn’t really know what it wants to be. At the beginning of the film, the atmosphere is light, engaging and actually quite funny. As the film progresses, it turns incredibly dark and even savage. Now I’ve got nothing against tonal shifts, but it just didn’t quite work for me as I felt I was watching the beginning of one film and the end of another.

I guess my other gripe with The Bank Job is that I’m just plain bored with the British bad ass crime genre. There are only so many Lovely Jubblies and Going down the Rub-a-dub that I can take before feeling that I’ve seen it all before. To be frank, British crims were long in danger of becoming a parody of themselves, and this was the movie that finally tipped them over the edge.

Can I recommend that you rush our to rent this DVD or buy it online. The answer my friends is not blowing in the wind. It’s sat in front of you right here and the answer is no. Two stars.

For the best of the rest:

Time Out:
Bank robberies – especially those perpetrated using high levels of ingenuity, cunning and skill – may be questionable, but they don’t half make a good read, or in this case, a great subject for a film. Roger Donaldson’s reenactment of a little-known London safe-deposit robbery in 1971 plays like an elongated, light-hearted episode of ‘The Sweeney’. It’s not surprising it has a televisual feel, mind, given that the screenplay is by ‘Porridge’ and ‘Likely Lads’ writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais.

Channel 4:
The Bank Job: Ah, Jason Statham - living answer to the question ‘What if Terry the chef from ‘Fawlty Towers’ became a Hollywood action man?’ It says plenty for Statham’s winning charisma that he can walk away unscathed from disasters like Revolver, but can he carry a film where there’s little scope for his trademark acrobatics and fisticuffs?

BBC:
Another lump of flotsam from the ebbing tide of dodgy British gangster flicks, The Bank Job sees Jason Statham (who else?) as a lovable cockney rogue given a shot at the mythical Big Score. But all is not as it seems: the bank heist masterminded by ice queen Saffron Burrows is just a front for the real prize - a cache of dirty photos featuring a Royal princess in flagrante.