The Bank Job

(2008, 110 min) Fans of hard-hitting, gritty '70s films rejoice! Hell, even the title is efficient. Now, The Bank Job doesn't exactly reinvent the wheel, but it's easy to forget that some of my favorite films from my favorite decade (including, say, Prime Cut and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three) didn't do that either. They just deliver straight-up, smart thrills and snappy dialogue in a refreshingly adult package. And if Jason Statham isn't quite the new Lee Marvin, he's just about the best we have right now.

Statham plays a lovable rogue who, acting on a tip from his sultry ex (Saffron Burrows), assembles a scrappy crew for a massive heist of safety deposit boxes. It's all based on a real story, with emphasis on the word "story." Nobody really knows what went down during the heist, and details have been embellished over the years thanks to urban legendry. But the version that longtime writing team Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais invent could hardly be more entertaining.

Renting a shop two doors down from a massive bank on Baker Street, the Statham's crew conspires to dig a tunnel into the safety deposit area over a weekend and be gone by the time anyone notices. As if that wasn't enough, the contents of the boxes present a new problem... one that goes so far up the chain, that the actual facts in the case wound up sealed by the government for decades to come. It's a procedural, a conspiracy story, even a romance of sorts, all addressed without fluff and with respect for the audience's intelligence. The only false note I can detect is a brief foray into traditional Statham superhero mode near the end, though even that is exciting enough to tempt me into giving it a pass. It's surely more fun than whatever happened in real life, the details of which may be revealed sometime around 2054.

– David Gorgos

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