I bet Jason Statham has two versions of his CV citing a different set of films on each. There are the Brit films where he portrays the cockney villain with sharp, snappy dialogue (Lock Stock, Snatch, OK we’ll try and forget Mean Machines), and then there’re the American mega-action films where dialogue gets tossed out of the window for acrobatic martial arts action (the Transporter films, Crank etc.). Thankfully with The Bank Job Jason is back on the former track and back on form (although short lived as I notice his future films include Crank 2 and Transporter 3!).
The Bank Job details the real life event of the 1971 Baker Street robbery, in which the safety deposit box vault of the Lloyds Bank on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road was broken into on the 11th of September. The robbers tunneled into the vault from a shop they rented two doors down. On the night of the eventual robbery a local ham radio operator overheard the walkie talkie conversations of the robbers and alerted the authorities. The police were unable to identify the bank being robbed as there were 750 banks within 10 miles of the radio operator. After 4 days of news exposure the story suddenly disappeared. Only recently it has been revealed that a D-notice was issued on the story (a D-notice is an official request to news editors not to publish or broadcast items on specified subjects, for reasons of national security). The purpose of the D-notice has never been disclosed and won’t be until 2054, it was speculated that the purpose was to protect a prominent member of the Royal Family.
The writers of this film have created a fictional story around these events describing what might have happened from the robbers’ perspective. The film tells the story of Terry Leather (Statham) a petty criminal trying to go straight with a second hand car shop and some debts to a dodgy loan shark. An old friend (ex-model Martine, played by Saffron Burrows) offers Terry an opportunity to make a huge pile of cash and get out of trouble once and for all. The story she gives him is that she’s dating a security firm employee that’s working on the Baker Street Lloyds and that they’re replacing the trembler system in the vault and it’ll be unprotected for a few days. Terry recruits a couple of his good mates, who aren’t above a bit of thievery, and a plan to tunnel into the vault is hatched.
What Terry and his friends don’t know is that Martine has been coerced by MI5. Arrested for drug smuggling (we never find out whether this was a righteous bust or whether she was fitted up) an old boyfriend, who just happens to work for MI5 gets her off on the provision that she arrange for the Baker Street Lloyds to be robbed and the contents of box 108 brought to him.
It turns out that a black militant calling himself Michael X has some highly compromising pictures of an undisclosed Royal caught in some rather graphic sexual acts. Mr. X has been using these pictures to blackmail himself out of trouble with the authorities and basically do as he pleases. On the advice of a friend (Mr. Vogel, a local club owner and porn distributor) Michael has securely stashed these pictures in, you guessed it, box no. 108 in the Baker Street bank. MI5 desperately want to get their hands on these photos, but can’t be seen to have any involvement. In coercing Martine into getting some of her shady old friends to stage the robbery, MI5 has its hands clean. If something goes wrong the gang goes to jail and no doubt Martine would meet with an unfortunate ‘accident’.
The robbery goes ahead and the gang tunnel in under the next door chicken takeaway and break in through the bottom of the vault. Little do they know that their walkie talkie conversations with their lookout, Eddie, are being overheard and recorded by a local ham radio operator. Recognising that the chat is about a break in to a bank, the radio operator contacts the police. The gang, thinking they’re doing a real robbery, set about the safety deposit boxes with gusto, while Martine makes a bee-line for box 108. Terry, who’s had suspicions about Martine’s motives for a while notices and takes the contents from her. Terry immediately realises the significance of the contents and the degree of trouble they’re in.
Things get further complicated by the contents of certain other safety deposit boxes. Just as Michael X stashed some highly sensitive material in there, so have some other shady characters. One is the aforementioned Mr. Vogel. As part of his dealings he’s had to pay a large number of bent coppers to look the other way from his smut business. As part of his immaculate record keeping, he’s kept a ledger of names and amounts paid which, if publicised, could bring down half of Scotland Yard. Another safety box owner runs a high class brothel. Her clients include some of the wealthiest and most influential people in the country, and she has photos of them in compromising positions taken through a two-way mirror.
The police eventually identify the correct bank, but unfortunately way too late. Terry, Martine and the gang have scarpered and holed up in a secure lock-up. From this point on the hunt is on, multiple parties want to find the thieves responsible, while Terry and co. have more bargaining tools than they realised.
The film is effectively split into two halves, the build-up to the job and the robbery itself, whilst the second half of the film deals with the aftermath. Don’t expect the glitz and glamour of Oceans Eleven, this is set in 1970s London after all and the film does an excellent job of conveying the time, it took me right back to episodes of the Sweeney! The characters are all portrayed excellently, they seem like real people, not the stylised characters we get from Hollywood. Statham wheels out his cockney gangster again, we’ve seen it all before but I’ll happily watch him in another 5 cockney gangster movies. Saffron Burrows is as saucy as ever as Martine and David Suchet stands out as the porn kind Mr. Vogel.
Picture quality is excellent, colours are muted, but fit very well with the 70s time frame. Sound quality does the job, but there’s not much here to tax a home theatre system. Extras include a reasonably entertaining commentary with director Roger Donaldson and star Jason Statham. There’s an informative behind the scenes feature on the making of The Bank Job as well as a very interesting 15 minute mini-documentary that details the history of the real Baker Street Bank Robbery.
If you want a break from Hollywood blockbusters and fancy a good old British bank robbery flick then you should definitely give this a try. It’ll transport you back to the sleazy, corrupt London of the 1970s and show you one possible explanation to the real life events that took place.