The Bank Job

Rating:

* * *

Verdict:

Mostly jaunty fact-based drama mixes heist and conspiracy thriller

A cheeky and entertaining blend of fact and wildly speculative fancy, this is an idea that veteran screenwriters Ian La Frenais and Dick Clement (who wrote great telly like

Porridge

and

Auf Wiedersehen, Pet)

kicked around for a decade.

The 1971 hit on the Baker St branch of Lloyds was billed by the tabloids as "the walkie-talkie robbery" because a ham radio operator happened on the robbers' radio traffic but had no idea where they were. That's the source of much of the tension in this serviceable treatment, part heist movie, part conspiracy thriller, by the Kiwi director of

The World's Fastest Indian

.

The more interesting aspect - that, after three days of fevered press coverage, a complete silence descended - is barely touched on, but it is the basis of the speculation beneath the film: that the Government issued a so-called D-notice banning coverage in the interests of national security.

From this raw material, the writers concoct a storyline in which fact and fiction blur.

To get out of a spot of bother, Martine Love (Burrows) agrees to steal from the bank's vault compromising photographs of a member of the royal family for a Whitehall mandarin who wants to neutralise their blackmail potential.

She, in turn, engages Terry Leather (Statham), a dodgy car dealer and old beau, for a robbery that will be, in essence, her crime's cover story.

Meanwhile Lew Vogel (an excellently nasty Suchet) is a psychopathically violent porn king who keeps some rather important stuff in the vault and is more than annoyed when it goes missing. Completing the circle is the would-be blackmailer, one Michael X (De Jersey), a rack-renting pimp and petty crim whose attempts to pass himself off as Britain's answer to Malcolm X found a credulous audience that included John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

The robbery occurs at the film's mid-point and much of the drama lies in the various characters' attempts to extricate themselves.  It sounds complicated, but the crisp writing and editing to match make it all easy to follow and Donaldson maintains a mostly jaunty tone, even if some of the lines are none too original (walkie-talkie exchange: "No names, Eddie."; "Sorry. Dave.")

Indeed, the film is at its least assured when he tries to get serious; the tension between the film's farcical and dramatic elements works to the advantage of neither.

Great fun, though.

Peter Calder

Cast:

Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Daniel Mays, David Suchet, Richard Lintern, Peter De Jersey

Director:

Roger Donaldson

Running time:

111 mins

Rating:

R16 (violence, offensive language, sex scenes)

Screening:

Berkeley, Hoyts, SkyCity, Rialto