{grate 3} British whorehouses, John Lennon cameos, royal orgies — has
a heist flick ever held so much promise? “The Bank Job,” penned by sitcom
scribes Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, is an ambitious stab at crafting a
movie for both the mid-20s AMC Everyman and those arthouse-goers craving
cerebral stuff. Unfortunately, it stumbles somewhere into an unconvincing gray
area, moving between sporadic splinters of violence and slow-moving plot
clarifications.
Granted, the plot is challenging to begin with — it’s a
loose take (we’re talking off-the-hinges loose) on the real life “walkie-talkie
robbery,” a government-concealed 1971 scandal involving amateur burglars who
tunneled their way into the Central London Lloyd’s Bank and made off scot-free
with a few million pounds.
Such a golden nugget of untold history screams to be
cinema-spun, and the screenwriters grab it and run, liberally infusing the tale
with conceivable shockers as they go. The robbery is less about money swiping
than a couple of compromising photos of an orgy-romping Princess Margaret. The
snaps manage to fall into the hands of Michael X (Peter De Jersey), a disciple
of his American black-power counterpart.
Charged with retrieving the x-rated shots, a government spy
cuts a deal with his modelesque girlfriend, Martine (the arresting, if not a
tad impassive Saffron Barrows): rob the safe-deposit box, return the photos and
keep the change. Problem is, she must find someone to play along without asking
questions — and finds the perfect willing fool in her old flame, Terry (Jason
Statham, familiar with the role of heist hero), a discontent car salesman with
a family to feed. Along with mates Kevin (Stephen Campbell Moore) and ex-porn
star Dave (the doe-eyed Daniel Mays), Terry agrees they’ve got nothing better
going for them than to engage in some seemingly harmless criminal action. Plus,
Martine is hot enough to convince pretty much anyone to rob a bank.
If the film is largely dry of laugh-out-loud moments, its
rare hysterics lie in the interactions between the unlikely band of robbers,
trying to jackhammer their way under a Chicken Inn without seeming conspicuous
to greasy-fingered customers, who are stupefied the moment their fried wings
start mysteriously quaking. When the police begin to think something might be
up, we wonder if the game is off — fortunately, the knock at the door is only
an innocuous “chips” delivery from the Inn (oh, those charming Brits and their
chips).
But, while there are plenty of brief nudie scenes to satisfy
the restless (Madame Sonia’s topless girls are a high point), the sexual
tension between Terry and Martine is so thinly veiled that when they finally
have their make-out moment in the safe, it’s only faintly stirring.
Riches and naughty bits aside, other incriminating material
is in the safe-deposit box to further twist the story — there’s also a list of
all the bribes paid to the shady British police force by Lew Vogel (David
Suchet).
When word of the heist gets out, Vogel pursues the robbers
who find the compromising ledger, adding to the quick-paced chaos that
culminates in its aftermath (which takes the first half of the movie to explain
and execute). Essentially, as Terry remarks so eloquently, “shit hits the proverbial
fan.”
Director Roger Donaldson is aware of the potential mess in
such a complex screenplay, and manages to keep his audience on board most of
the way; we glimpse the larger condition of
political frailty, and the intimate portraits of those caught within its cat’s
cradle. The production designers channel early ’70s Brit style and London Soho
in all its sideburned glory, capturing the murky hedonism of a foggy milieu.
Most exciting is that we realize the story has yet to be
completely unraveled; like an episode of “Unsolved Mysteries,” it ends on a
perhaps-we’ll-never-know note. The police smother the press once the photos are
retrieved and Terry returns to his wife in one piece, if not a little jarred.
The heist is effectively pushed to the back pages of urban legend.
The only standout flimsy spots are the moments where scribes
Clement and La Frenais overzealously jam too many swinging plot threads and
open-ended characters into one crowded frame. Still, we mostly accept it, even
if we don’t quite know what’s going on for the majority of the time. “The Bank
Job” might not take the biscuit, but it has more than enough bite to keep us
awake.
