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Why isn't Jason Statham a star yet? I mean a BIG star, not one who always seems on the verge of striking it big in Hollywood. Statham may not be a great actor, but he is certainly not a bad one either. He holds the screen with his strong charisma, and he doesn't need to prove to us that he is as tough as he is. Problem is a lot of the movies he has been making recently like "Revolver" or "War" with Jet Li have been crap. Jason may be the best thing in them, but it doesn't matter in the end because it is not enough to save whatever movie he is in. But now he is back on the screen in "The Bank Job" which just might be his best movie yet. This should be the movie that makes him into a star, but audiences have not been flocking to it, and looks to disappear from the movies sooner rather than later. Screw the box office! Check out this tightly directed, rough edged heist movie as it is one of the most entertaining ones of its genre in recent years. The movie was directed by Roger Donaldson, and he has gone from making intense thrillers ("No Way Out" and "Thirteen Days" with Kevin Costner) to entertaining trash like "c*cktail" (only Tom Cruise could have made a movie like that a hit back then). Here, he keeps things on the move and never loses a beat as the movie revolves around the true story of the 1971 Baker Street Robbery. That's right, it's based on a true story (heavily fictionalized of course to protect the guilty), and it's a story that has been kept under wraps for thirty years due to a gag order placed on the events by the British Government. Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) meets up with her friend Terry Leather (played by Statham) for a job on a bank. This bank is currently undergoing a security system overhaul that will essentially leave it defenseless except for a time-locked door. The plan is to dig a hole to the bank from an adjacent store into the bank's vault and loot it from there. However, the heist itself is the easiest part for the crew of thieves. Turns out that Martine has an ulterior motive for the bank job as she has been blackmailed into it by high ranking British officials after she was busted on a drug charge. She was to break into a safe that contained compromising photos of a member of the Royal Family in a sexual situation that could destroy their reputation. Once Terry and his gang discover Martine's real motive for the robbery, they quickly realize that they have been setup to take a fall that will put the blame all on them while the British government gets to deny any culpability. Now most heist movies are about all the setup and preparation for the heist itself, and it typically culminates in the robbers finally getting into bank so we can see if their plans end up go awry. But surprisingly, the heist itself ends up taking about half of the film's running time. The movie really centers on the impossible position that Terry, Martine and their mates end up in, and we watch as they try to get their way out of it. The movie starts out with a scene of the Royal Family member getting it on with two guys at once, and we see a black man taking several photos without her realizing it. Turns out that the black man is actually Michael X (Peter De Jersey), a Caribbean drug dealer who fronts as an activist seeking justice for his brothers that he feels are being unfairly treated by the British government and the police. When he is brought up on charges that could land him in jail for 10 or more years, he uses the potentially embarrassing photos to blackmail the court into keeping him free from jail. As a result, the government wants to get their hands on the photos so that Michael will no longer be a threat to them, and they can do away with them. The plan is for Martine to get some people together to do the robbery, and after she gets the photos, the government can send in their MI5 agents to arrest them. This way, they will have no connection to the robbers so it cannot be traced back to them. The interesting thing about the movie is as you look at all the characters involved, there is nothing but corruption from the thieves to the pimps and even on to the government. Everyone is interested in their own affairs at the expense of others, and in the end, it doesn't matter how far up you are on the ladder of society. Image is everything, and some will do whatever it takes to keep that image from being destroyed. As long as the people have no clear understanding of the truth and believe in what they see and what is said to them, then all will be fine. But of course, as we learned in a nightmarish way from "Before The Devil Knows You're Dead," the best planned robberies usually fall apart disastrously. However, one of the taglines of the movie says it best: "The true story of a heist gone wrong... in all the right ways." Jason Statham has some great moments where he doesn't have to say anything, but he can still convince of the things he truly does care about like his family. The character he plays, Terry Leather, is not without his flaws. He cheats on his wife with Satine and leaves her in the cold in regards to what he is actually doing when he is not at home, but you don't doubt how much he loves his wife and kids when you look into his eyes. Not an easy man to forgive, but an easy to believe thanks to Statham's performance. The rest of the cast is uniformly excellent and is compromised of some great British actors who have yet to be cast in a Harry Potter movie. Among them is Saffron Burrows who gives a very seductive performance as Satine, the woman who gets everyone involved in the robbery. When I have seen Saffron in the past, she threatened to come across as wooden in some of her performances (I'm thinking "Deep Blue Sea" from a few years ago). But here, she's very good at barely trying to hide her ulterior motives for the robbery from everyone. Her character wants to disappear, but she soon realizes that it won't be easy. Roger Donaldson succeeds in staying ahead of the audience just about every step of the way as the movie heads to its tense conclusion when everything comes together for an embarrassment of the riches. After subjecting to some crappy movies for a long time, Roger Donaldson has come back in a big way with movies like this and "Thirteen Days" among others. Hopefully, he will keep getting good material like this in the future. "The Bank Job" deserves a bigger audience than it has been getting at theaters over the last few weeks. It's never less than entertaining, and it keeps you on the edge of your seat throughout. It's also one of the few movies from Lions Gate that does not fill the screen with blood and guts (not that there's anything wrong with that). I can see why the Brits manage to quash the press over this whole robbery. You cannot always stop a scandal, but you can keep it from going further than your native shores. Of course, with today's technology, scandals are impossible to stop or quell. Guess some people had it a bit more luck in the 70's. email this review to a friend
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