Review

Review Date: 16-March-08
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Just OK

The Bank Job (2008)

If there is an exhausted, wrung out, empty cliché at the movies, it is the notion of thieves taking one last shot at the Big Score. I mean attractive, essentially decent, struggling thieves, of course — a flick about homely, brutish, gluttonous robbers that did not really center on a lawman in pursuit would be original if nothing else. Alas, "The Bank Job" falls into the clichéd category and causes me, for the thousandth time, to question why audiences are expected to root for people too lazy or impatient to get by like everyone else, who take what is not theirs with no consideration for friends, family, or potential victims. At least "The Bank Job" offers something new by being derived from a chapter of British history.

The time is 1971 and the chief thief is Terry (Jason Statham), a bloke with a wife, two kids, and his own business who can't get out from under a shady past. Terry is enticed into robbing a bank by his old friend Martine (Saffron Burrows), with whom he shares a long-simmering and unconsummated lust. He suspects but does not know Martine's true reason for hatching the plan, which involves her government-agent lover (Richard Lintern) and a sleazy two-bit demagogue who possesses compromising photos of Princess Margaret (the queen's sister) that allow him to avoid prosecution. Terry and his mates want to get their hands on the jewels and money in a vault of safe deposit boxes and retire to lives of domestic comfort. Martine, however, is charged with lifting the photos out of a box and delivering them into government care.

The heist goes down fairly well until the gang realizes what it means to raid out-of-the-way corners of rich people's lives. Not only do they make off with the princess photos, they also unwittingly steal pictures of peers in a whorehouse and the ledger of a porn kingpin (David Suchet) detailing years of business with crooked cops. Suddenly Terry & Co. find Scotland Yard, British intelligence, and underworld thugs on their heels, each with unfriendly intent. It becomes a game of threat and counter-threat which proves no easy job.

The presence of sex as a motivator rather than a tease is another of the film's unique offerings (indeed, it starts off with a bang), yet this almost makes the historical grounding a liability. An absurd and class-conscious squeamishness about sex dictates both the actions and outcomes of the plot, and it is sad to know that attitudes on the subject have not evolved much over 40 years. I was not just rankled by the belief that people who rob a bank ought to get caught and pay for it, which runs counter to all such movies' premises, but by the ridiculous amount of scheming generated by trivial facts. If the noble persons in the racy photographs were committing adultery at the time, it is not mentioned, so it seems like their engagement in mildly kinky sex is the issue. I do not defend the promotion of Paris Hilton to a celebrity because she got nailed and broadcast it on the Internet, nor do I admire the prudish (yet related) hysteria which adheres to other revelations that somebody with money or power got laid. Here's a News Flash: Humans Have Sex … They've Been Doing It for Millennia! Why has this long been a source of terrified or glorified fascination when it comes to the elite? I feel like that space alien from "Buckaroo Banzai:" Princess Margaret enjoyed a three-way? So what. Big deal.

This is probably not what "The Bank Job" is intended to make me think about or the basis on which it should be judged. Then again, politics and social status are the realities that set this movie apart. And they, like clichés, are icky.

Copyright © 2008 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.