The Third Draft

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Reviewed by Coach Patton
©D. Patton, All Rights Reserved

Directed by Roger Donaldson
Written by Dick Clement & Ian La Frenais

Running Length: 1:50 Rated R (Violence, Profanity, Nudity, Sexual Situations)

PLOT: Martine offers Terry a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street. She targets a roomful of safe deposit boxes worth millions in cash and jewelry. But Terry and his crew don't realize the boxes also contain a treasure trove of dirty secrets - secrets that will thrust them into a deadly web of corruption and illicit scandal.

Featuring: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore, Daniel Mays, James Faulkner, Alki David, Michael Jibson, Richard Lintern, Keeley Hawes, David Suchet

The true story of a heist gone wrong -- in all the right ways.

The Bank Job is based on a true story - a daring 1971 robbery that made front page headlines until MI-5 made a “D-Notice” request that stifled further coverage by the press (on the grounds that it created a danger to National Security), driving it from the newspapers and into myth and memory.

Because of the D-Notice, the story disappears from the newspapers. It’s just gone, like it never existed. Rumors of a government cover-up abound. Rumors run wild about what could possibly have been stolen from those boxes -- maybe just one of those boxes -- that would prompt the government to quash the story.

While some of the facts are known, there are many gaps in the official record. Screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian Lefrenais, supposedly collaborating with anonymous inside sources, seek to provide “fill” for many of those gaps.

That’s where The Bank Job exists, in the delicious space between all the unknowns, filling in those blanks, guessing on some of it but working from as many possibly known quantities as it can. Maybe it’s not the 100-percent truth -- maybe it’s half, or more, invented. But it’s a damn good guess, and a ridiculously entertaining one.

Jason Statham (War, Crank) is perfect here -- leads a band of, well, patsies, though of course they don’t know that’s what they are: guys who’ve been set up to pull off this break-in and take out something that the British covert agencies really, really need to keep secret. (The someone it belongs to is threatening to go public with it, and it’s that someone’s box the thing needs to be stolen from.) Statham’s small-time crook Terry cooks up a careful plan for the job, but he’s suspicious, of course, of the old girlfriend, Martine (Saffron Burrows: Reign Over Me, Troy),who brought it to him, and he’s right to be. Terry may not be the brightest bulb, but he’s not totally stupid, either, and he knows she’s up to something.

We do too, which is part of the brilliance of the script by the team of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais (Across the Universe): we know more than Terry does, and even if we don’t know it all, even if we can’t guess how it’s all going to shake out, we know it’s not gonna be good . . . but it is gonna be a whole hellova lot of fun getting there. That much is obvious from the “fade in.”

Director Roger Donaldson (The Recruit, Thirteen Days) makes the cynicism of not being able to trust anyone but a crook like Terry -- who’s not a bad guy at all, even if his work is a bit shady -- seem like an okay place to be. And The Bank Job ends up being a fresh and cheery spin on the heist movie. Cuz it really is easy to root for Terry and his gang, like we always want to root for the villains in movies like these -- because the acknowledged villains are the only ones worth rooting for.

Some of what appears on-screen in Bank Job is speculative, but most of it has the ring of truth and fits in with the facts. Of course, since the names have been “changed to protect the guilty," Bank Job doesn't provide any shocking revelations about still-living individuals. What it accomplishes, however, is to present a possible autopsy of a crime that has baffled people for decades. And, regardless of whether it's more fact or fiction, it provides an enjoyable two hours.

Much as I enjoyed Stephen Soderbergh's Oceans 11, 12 & 13 (more for the company and chemistry of the actors than for the story-lines), The Bank Job demonstrates how much more richness there can be in a heist movie when layers are woven into the story and the storyline extends beyond the innermost escapade. When “The End” flashes on the screen, the viewer feels as if he has seen a complete story open up rather than merely having been granted the chance to look closely through a window at the inner workings of an infamous historical crime. The Bank Job is exciting entertainment for adults; it’s well-paced and smart -- something that is more of a scarcity than it should be. Or at least that’s How It Seemed from Where I Sat.

What’s it worth?
For film buffs -- the price of the evening shows
For the average viewer --- matinee price at your local cinema.

Roll credits:

Director: Roger Donaldson
Screenplay: Dick Clement & Ian Lafrenais
Cinematography: Michael Coulter
Music: J. Peter Robinson

CAST

Jason Statham --- Terry Leather
Saffron Burrows --- Martine Love
Stephen Campbell Moore --- Kevin Swain
Daniel Mays --- Dave Shilling
James Faulkner --- Guy Singer
David Suchet --- Lew Vogel
Peter De Jersey --- Michael X
Rupert Frazer --- Lord Drysdale
Colin Salmon --- Hakim Jamal

Fade to black

In The Name Of Truth, Justice and In the Service of a Higher Good, I Remain Your Friend, Movie Reviewer and Spiritual Advisor, Coach Patton

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