ianlouisiana
By 1971 nobody gave two hoots about who Princess Margaret had sex with. If she'd spent as much time underneath various ne'er - do - wells as had been alleged,the poor old dear could hardly have come up for breath. She slept with the well - endowed John Bindon?Roddy Lewellyn,Peter Sellers..Mustique should have been ankle - deep in condoms...... The preposterous idea that "The Establishment"(what a splendid catch - all term that is) should encourage a team of frankly not overly - bright London crims to do a safety deposit vault in order to get photos of Royal/Commoner action is the wellspring behind this creaky "thriller"that is thirty years beyond it's sell - by date. The simple fact is that if the Security Services wanted to suppress the photos they simply had to serve a "D" notice on the Bank's Governors and walk out with them. All sorts of rumours were prevalent at the time about the real "Baker St. Moles",many set about by themselves. The self styled Michael "X" was a pimp and a violent criminal hiding behind the skirts of his community whilst presenting himself as it's saviour. He was later hanged in Jamaica where his ethnicity was not considered consequential. Without the silly Royal connection,"The Bank Job" must stand on its merits as a "Caper"movie but singularly fails to do so. The usual Brits turn up and do their posh or mockney turns,trouser the cash and go onto better things(or not,as the case may be). Mr Suchet gives a Michael Caine impersonation that entertains for about two minutes but unfortunately lasts rather longer. The Met scarcely covered itself in glory during the Baker St investigation and certain officers were quietly "resigned" in the aftermath of the affair - that much is true,but no real - life villains were "disappeared" or found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge or wherever a favourite subject for conspiracy theorists. The fact of the matter is that it was a crime that read better than it actually turned out. And,in "The Bank Job",it didn't even read that well.
bowmanblue
Don't be fooled by 'The Bank Job' having Jason Statham as 'top billing.' If you've seen any of his films in recent years, you may think that this is just another 'kick-ass' kind of mindless film. Luckily, it's much better than that.It's about a gang of London bank robbers who get - unknowingly - recruited by MI5 to break into a bank and steal some photos which mustn't ever be made public. It's 'based on a true story,' by which I mean that there are definitely some facts on display here and the bits that aren't facts have been 'filled in' to make it a better story.However, I wouldn't dwell on how true every aspect is. If you did that you may not enjoy it. True or not, it's a twisty-turny kind of affair where you don't know what's coming next. It's almost like a Guy Richie film without Guy Richie having anything to do with it. Like 'Lock Stock' and 'Snatch' The Bank Job features multiple sets of dodgy characters whose lives are seemingly separate, until they're eventually brought together.The opening segment is a little slow, but stick with it. Whether you just like Guy Richie films, British films, gangster or heist films, there should be something to entertain most people here. Even if you don't like any of those genres, it also makes a damn good thriller, too.I don't know how true the story was, but, as the credits are rolling, even if you don't believe it happened just the way you've witnessed, it's the kind of story that you can't help but feel is quite capable of happening.http://thewrongtreemoviereviews.blogspot.co.uk/
bigverybadtom
No exaggeration. The box described the movie as based on a true story which took place in 1970's Britain about some small-time crooks who are lured into robbing a bank's safe deposit box, unaware that they are pawns in a government plot to remove sexually compromising photographs involving a member of the Royal Family. Intriguing premise, right?Okay, the film starts out showing brief nude scenes which we later learn are what had been in said photographs. Then we learn of the conspiracy plot, and how the small-time crooks are found and lured in without their knowledge. There is also an irrelevant subplot about a black man having sex with a white woman, evidently as some sort of 1970's political statement. But then comes a scene where the crooks go to a strip club, then a brothel, and we see lots and lots of bare breasts and buttocks and the crooks get bound in leather and chains for S&M.We turned it off at that point. We were expecting a story about crime and conspiracy, but the movie clearly entered gratuitous sexuality territory. It's one thing to be suggestive and another to be outright pornographic. If you want a bank heist movie, there are plenty of infinitely better choices, and if you want porn, well, there's no shortage of that on the Internet.
ADF
When money spoils a good story.I know little about screenplay or script writing despite being on the fringe of TV and film production for six years but I do recall how financiers were more concerned with ensuring a profit than they were with the story. I mean the story is the whole point of it, isn't it? Sell them on the story and offer them good actors and direction to loosen the purse strings. More than once though they interfered at the eleventh hour and what would have been a gem was turned to mud instead.I watched The Bank Job with Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows. From my own very small involvement in its production I know that it was a film based on fact, so I was disappointed that the films financiers felt they had to completely alter those facts. The matter is no longer buried by the Official Secrets Act so they have no excuse. Robbing a bank to save Princess Margaret's reputation gave them a chance to throw a bit of sex and scandal in, but the real story was that in one of those safety deposit boxes was a Cold War intelligence coup so great that once handed to the authorities by the robbers, not only was all the evidence against the gang quietly destroyed but so were their previous criminal records AND they were allowed to keep everything else they had stolen. The investigation carried on (in name only) so as not to tip off the Russians.I think I know which would have made the better film and I am pretty sure the writers, Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ('Porridge' : 'Auf Wiedersehen, Pet' : 'Lovejoy') knew it too. Once again the money men got it wrong.They were filming Jason's garage in Southwark, beside the Thames a stones throw from the old Fire Station used in 'London's Burning' Ironically only the location manager and myself knew that they were making a movie about tunneling to commit a robbery of a million or so pounds and they were in reality stood quite literally fifty feet above two billion in gold as the location was across the narrow road from what was back then a massive covert vault.From time to time local residents may object to the presence of a film unit but this was the only one where one used a forklift truck to attack the portable generator.
AD
