The Bank Job (2008)
The Bank Job more or less does the job; particularly during the first half, which plays like a smuttier, more politically charged Rififi. The film has an appealing, cynical texture of just another thing for the dollar erotic manipulation. For the opening fifty minutes or so, one can be forgiven for mistakenly feeling that director Roger Donaldson and screenwriters Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement have cooked up something as entertaining as Donaldson’s best film, No Way Out.
The film, possibly by necessity, peters out in the middle though, splintering and becoming more and more convoluted at a time when the story should be landing its vicious punch lines, ultimately lacking the fatalistic bloody charge of the great heist pictures. Stir that with an obvious lack of originality and you’ve got a firm, no real problem “not bad” picture, though it tells you something about its impact that I’m struggling now, just a few days after seeing it, to remember how the damn thing ends.
The plot’s bouncing back and forth from one wronged party to another structure (like a less annoying Guy Ritchie movie) may tempt you to spend the remaining running time pondering why the film’s stars, Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows, haven’t made a larger impact on the Hollywood movie. They both have the inarguable stuff, lending The Bank Job a juice that it doesn’t have the common sense to really run with. Statham has been appearing in disreputable little genre pictures for some time, and it tells you something about his appeal that I’ve seen most all of them. Statham has that impossible to fake no bullshit I was probably a bouncer before getting into acting as a lark authority of a true old school star bad ass, imbuing even the dumbest of situations and dialogue with a wonderful grit and resignation. I wouldn’t suggest watching the dreadful London, even for him, but Statham’s presence occasionally allows you to forget that picture’s banality and unpleasantness.
I’m sorry to admit that I did largely forget about Burrows since catching her in Deep Blue Sea (I missed her Figgis pictures), though I remember her resurfacing last year in Reign Over Me and lending a thankless male masturbatory fantasy a palpable vulnerable danger, we feel as if director Mike Binder is cutting away from a decent erotic thriller in favor of yet another one of Adam Sandler’s attempts to prove that he can play the castrated frat boy just as well as the psychotic one. That movie is awful; one of the more irritating I caught last year, but Burrows’ impression is lasting. And, if I may be allowed one male indulgence, she is incredibly, nearly supernaturally, beautiful. One would rob a bank, a yacht, perhaps even the White House, to curry favor with this woman.
It would also be unfortunate to forget David Suchet’s performance as a porn king, one of the more dangerous people the titular heist pisses off, though it’s a mark of the film’s disappointing lack of focus that the extent of his rampage is unclear. One may accuse me of being intolerant of ambiguity, but occasionally cluttered filmmaking has to be called cluttered filmmaking. The Bank Job is a decent night at the movies, but that’s kinda the problem, decent should be the last word to occur to one when describing a heist film.
★★★
March 31st, 2008 at 10:03 am
I enjoyed this picture, too. I agree that it loses its focus, but one of the things I liked about it that you didn’t mention is a very authentic feel. It takes place in the seventies. It LOOKS like the seventies. The crooks in this are just bozos. They LOOK like bozos. I do wish that the robber/heros were allowed to be a little less likable.
And nice shoutout to David Suchet, my man Hercule Poirot. He’s excellent.
And that Saffron Burrows…
March 31st, 2008 at 12:02 pm
Poirot owned this film.
This one frustrated me a bit because it had so many great elements, but didn’t quite add up into a greater whole. As it was, it was fine, not great, but fine and sometimes that’s enough…but it felt like a missed opportunity.
March 31st, 2008 at 12:28 pm
Travis: good point. The film does very much feel like a 1970s British crime movie, which is perhaps why I was mildly disappointed. I kept thinking, damn this looks the look, why isn’t quite walking the walk?
March 31st, 2008 at 6:59 pm
Well I trust you as the heist expert and I guess I’m glad I didn’t miss anything that would somehow have made this more than decent. Your description of Statham’s ‘tude is right on. Definitely the kind of guy you wouldn’t want to spill a drink on.
April 1st, 2008 at 9:44 am
I didn’t like Donaldson’s direction in this. Too many TV skewed angles ala Batman. It didn’t look or feel all that 70’s to me. Especially with the big VISA logo on the store next to the bank. I loved the ending tho.
April 2nd, 2008 at 8:36 am
I enjoyed it quite a bit, although I agree that it loses some narrative momentum after the heist, although I think it rediscovers its footing toward the end. I’m not sure Saffron Burrows is actually good so much as well cast. But you can say that about a lot of actors. It’s part of the deal.
April 4th, 2008 at 9:04 am
I agree that it doesn’t quite ever take advantage of its setting, including the ’70s as a time setting.
I actually had a different take on it, Chuck. I thought the first act was too much like almost every British crime flick I’ve ever seen and that it really only gets out of neutral when the heist is actually finished.
It does get needlessly complicated and contrived with so many subplots and characters but for some reason I enjoyed that latter half more than the lead-up to the robbery, which honestly did almost nothing for me.
Saffron Burrows. Yeah.
Poirot was excellent, though.
April 4th, 2008 at 10:19 am
I have a thing for long, slow builds in heist movies, regardless of how cliche, it’s the going wrong part that usually begins to lose me. I’ll have to rewatch this picture on DVD when I get the chance.