The Bank Job

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Ten minutes into The Bank Job and it's obvious what the major boo-boo Roger Donaldson and writers Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement have made: they treat their story as if it were the first ever gangsterheist flick, which makes their film redundant, cliched and boring. Based on a true story of the 1971 Baker Street robbery, The Bank Job sees Statham head up a respectable group of thieves as they try to burrow into the vault of Lloyds bank from a shop two stores away. The heist comes off without many problems, but when the crew find the scandalous nature of the loot in the safety deposit boxes - photos that will embarrass some important MPs and incriminate top gangsters - the rules of the game change. Donaldson's career has been a series of ups and downs: for every Thirteen Days or No Way Out, there's a Species or Cocktail; The Bank Job can be lumped into the latter group. There's too much info to digest from the off as we're introduced to a myriad of characters that will play a major part later on. Leaving aside confusion as to who's who and where the story is going for a moment, this would be all fine and well if the characters were allowed to breathe. However, the script is so rigid, no one is allowed to exist outside the story - every line, every nuance of every character is channelled into the story and this has a result of making the characters mouthpieces for plot information, rather than real people you can root for. The Bank Job does get better as it goes on as it relaxes and opens up, but the damage is done and the audience is lost.

Details: UK / 120mins (15A)