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 LaFrenais 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.