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The Bank Job
is equally reprehensible for being a mess as it is respectable
for being ambitious. The movie, retelling a “true story” in an
amped-up fashion, is a pastiche of everything we’ve ever seen
before in heist pictures and a few things that we haven’t. In
what could’ve been a simple tale about robbing safety deposit
boxes, screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and director
Roger Donaldson have complicatedly interwoven recent history,
statements about radical socio-political reform, juicy fictional
moral dilemmas, and captivating action-sequences. I’m full of
high-praise for The Bank Job, indeed. Unfortunately, I’m
equally as prepared to criticize the movie; after all, it is way
too all-over-the-place to have any type of pointed dramatic
effect. Somewhere between the heist led by protagonist Terry
(Jason Statham), the sequences involving black separatist
Michael X (Peter De Jersey), and the vignettes honing in on
corruption in the British Government, the movie gets too muddled
for its own good. What’s even more disappointing: in the lead
role, Statham loses nearly all of the “cool guy”-appeal he
boasted in The Transporter films and Crank. In the
end, The Bank Job succeeds in keeping the viewer
moderately entertained throughout its duration, but it’s about
as stable as Britney Spears’ home-life. In a few months, the
film will make for a terrific rental but, until then, it isn’t
really worth seeking out.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 3.11.2008
Screened on:
3.8.2008 at the AMC Burbank 16 in Burbank, CA.
The Bank Job is rated R and runs 110
minutes.
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