The Bank Job is a lot of fun. It's based on the true story of a bank robbery in London in the 1970s. Some robbers tunneled from a clothing store two doors down from the bank, up into the vault. The details of how the police found out about it and searched for them are interesting and I won't give them away. What's more interesting is that after this made the London press for a few days a D-Notice was issued by the government which stopped the press from reporting on the story. It's not known why but it usually involves national security reasons. The movie presents its view of the causes, though this New Yorker article says it's very hard to tell how much is real and how much isn't.
What's fun is that the film doesn't dumb down the story for the audience. There are a lot of players involved, including black supremacists, local criminals, police, MI5 (and maybe MI6 the film suggests even the British can't remember the difference), and of course the small time crooks we get to know who are pulling off the job. At times you might not follow the big picture, or know which group of agents is which, but you can follow each scene and it all works.
Jason Statham of The Transporter and Crank was perfectly competent in a non-action role. When he gets in a pretty simple fist fight at the end with one barely over-the-top twist, it's hard to not to give a little cheer. The only other person I knew in the film was Saffron Burrows and I didn't even recognize her. I've been pretty unimpressed with most of her early roles, but thought she was quite good here.
So far, this and In Bruges have been my favorite films of the year.
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