The Bank Job (2008)

The greatest movie ever made..!

Fantastic!

Am I Missing Something?

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

Wow! Based on the 1971 Baker Street bank robbery, the high profile contents with royal connections make this film, not just an ordinary bank robbery!I much prefer Jason Statham in his earlier British roles, before the action man stays appeared and a great cast to go along side. Attracting attention from every corner, this is a great British film that I recommend to see

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.

I have only seen one other Jason Statham movie and that was Lock Stock and two smoking Barrels. I do not remember him at all. I have always avoided his films because they look as thought they are stock(no pun intended) stupid action movies. However this was on TV so I recorded it to have a quick look. It has a great British cast of character actors and it is written by Clements and La Frenais which guarantees quality. Jason Statham is no Olivier but he carries his role well ably supported by reliable actors like Keeley Hawes, Daniel Mays, Saffron Burrows, Peter Bowles and others. There is hardly any wasted screen time in this gripping thriller, said to be based on actual events - if that is so then it is amazing indeed. It starts quite slowly and one is tempted to bin it for the first 15 minutes but then the seemingly unconnected threads begin to knit together and you just have to watch it. I will take the opportunity to check out Stathams other movies if they are half as good as this. It is great when one is surprised by the unexpected when you watch a film.

Terry Leather (Jason Statham) is a struggling petty criminal. Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) has a proposal to rob a bank breaking into the safety deposit boxes. Martine had been pinched for smuggling drugs, and the MI5 or MI6 is using her to get at a deposit box. They're after Michael X who is a black activist, drug smuggler and general disruptive element. The only problem is that he is blackmailing the government with embarrassing photos of a royal family member in the deposit box. Terry doesn't know about the photos. When the gang breaks into the boxes, they find other embarrassing photos of prominent politicians, incriminating ledgers of big criminals, and lots of loot. Now everybody is after them.I don't know how much if any of this is true. All I know is that it doesn't really matter for the movie. The actual robbery is fun. The aftermath is quite complicated. It doesn't go into the flashy realm of the Oceans movies. The only minor complaint is the ending that is a little too neat. Somebody got overtime neatly pulling all the loose threads to wrap up at the same time. It's really unnecessary. A messy ending could have worked better.