Bank Job, The (DVD)

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"The Bank Job" is one of the more disappointingly mediocre and overall uneventful films I've sat through in a long while. It's not necessarily a bad movie, but it's also not a very good one, either. "The Bank Job" is simply the same heist movie you've already seen made and remade for the past fifty years. I suppose in a world devoid of "Riffi," "Reservoir Dogs," and "The Killing," "The Bank Job" might seem like a notable entry to the genre. But thankfully we do not live in that sad sounding world, and here in this reality "The Bank Job" would have gone completely unnoticed if not for the inclusion of Jason Statham in the leading role.

Based on of "true events," the plot for "The Bank Job" is as simplistic as it comes. A group of robbers get together under the guidance of somebody who isn't completely honest about their reasons for staging said heist. The heist occurs and things go wrong and then a bunch of double crossing occurs until the end credits roll. For those of you in need of more explanation, here it is in drawn-out detail. Petty criminal Terry Leathers (Statham) is approached by his ex-girlfriend Martine (Saffron Burrows), who lets him in on a security breach she's become aware of at a bank on Baker Street in London. Terry gathers a crew of like-minded thieves, and the group digs their way into the vault of the bank. The only problem is that Martine wasn't entirely honest about the heist's true mission. While the rest of the group grabs all the cash and jewels they can pry out of the vault's safe deposit boxes, Martine makes a beeline for one box in particular. For she's been enlisted by MI5 to recover the contents of the box registered to black revolutionary Micheal X, blackmail photographs of Princess Margret doing the horizontal mambo with a couple of cabana boys. On top of that, the thieves also manage to pilfer an additional folder of photos featuring many high-ranking government officials being serviced at a local S & M brothel. After fleeing the scene, a few different double crosses occur with the end result for our rag-tag group of thieves being a city-wide manhunt involving the coppers, as well as the UK's top security agency and thugs from both Micheal X's camp and the brothel.

While the film proudly states that its plot is "Based on A True Story," the fact that the news reports regarding the original 1971 robbery were blocked for reasons of National Security led the scriptwriters to rely on a sincere amount of speculation. Micheal X's true involvement is unknown as his government files have been sealed since the incident. Thus, "The Bank Job" is yet another one of those movies that's kinda sorta almost based on true events that might have happened but probably didn´t.

There isn't a stand-out moment in the entire 110-minute runtime of "The Bank Job." The cinematography is completely average, there isn't a remarkable bit of acting occurring on screen, and the script is painfully by the numbers. Upon glancing at the resume for the duo that wrote "The Bank Job," this isn't entirely surprising given their biggest films to date rested on the shoulders of either the film's soundtrack "Across the Universe" or a familiar animation style "Flushed Away." The directing is as average as it gets. But who in their right mind was expecting to see a film with any sort of an original voice crafted by Roger Donaldson, the man who gave us "Cocktail," "Species," and "Dante's Peak"? The main tragedy of "The Bank Job" is the complete waste of Jason Statham, who was seemingly headed to the top tier of action stars with hits like "Crank," "Snatch," and "The Transporter." Given that his next four projects are all unwanted sequels or remakes, it seems as if Statham's star has already begun its decent back to earth and will inevitably crash in a field of bland direct-to-DVD action films.