The Bank Job

"The Bank Job" is a good old-fashioned bank heist movie that’s based on a 1971 London robbery in which a Lloyds Bank vault was emptied while the city slept. Jason Statham plays Terry, a petty criminal turned family man who jumps at the chance to take a surge in income when his old friend Martine (played by Saffron Burrows) hatches a bank job that is too good to be true. Terry gathers together his old mates for the task of tunneling into the bank’s safety deposit vault without knowing Martine’s interest in the secret photographic contents of one specific safe deposit box. Director Roger Donaldson is most famous for directing Tom Cruise in "Cocktail," and he does a good job of capturing swinging London of the early ‘70s while ratcheting up suspense in a story that exposes the layers of political scandal behind one of the biggest bank heists ever committed.

Rated R. 110 mins. (B) (Three Stars)