The Bank Job

Director Roger Donaldson (The World's Fastest Indian, Dante's Peak) goes for something different from his previous output here, with this good, old-fashioned British heist movie set in the early 1970s. Jason Statham plays the leader of a ragtag bunch of crooks who's persuaded by a former flame (Saffron Burrows) to break into the safety-deposit boxes of a Baker Street bank. But murky forces are afoot. Unbeknown to Statham and company, one of the boxes contains a right royal secret and the shadier elements of Britain's security forces will stop at nothing to ensure that it stays secret. Despite claims that it is founded in fact, The Bank Job is fancifully plotted and quite preposterous, but with a fast-moving script from Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, it still manages to be entertaining, engaging and the sort of Swinging Sixties-style caper film that they don't really make any more.