Jason Statham fans who have grown accustomed to seeing the “Transporter” star dangling from helicopters, driving sports cars down the sides of skyscrapers and trading lethal blows with Jet Li may fear he’s gone soft. For the duration of “The Bank Job,” the resilient Brit relies more on his brain than his brawn and the clever heist picture follows his lead. Our preconceptions being what they are, though, when Statham finally does trade fisticuffs with an adversary during the film’s waning moments, we breathe a cathartic sigh of relief. I think that says more about us than it does about him.
Statham plays Terry, a West London husband and father whose checkered past makes him an ideal mark for conniving former girlfriend Martine (Saffron Burrows). She convinces Terry and his crew to infiltrate a bank vault, promising that the facility’s security system has been disabled for repairs. But Martine disguises her true motive – she has been ordered by MI6 agents to obtain compromising photographs of wild-child Princess Margaret, Elizabeth II’s youngest sister, which a radical activist (Peter De Jersey) is using to blackmail Britain’s power brokers.
Based on actual events, “Bank Job” bustles along to its central theft, then treads water until Terry can map a proper end game. There’s fat to be trimmed from the plot. History dictates that writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais must explore certain characters that were involved with, but superfluous to, the heist. But director Roger Donaldson excels when he’s blending thick suspense with a touch of history (rent the excellent “Thirteen Days” for his crackerjack account of the Cuban Missile Crisis). In his hands, “Bank” is a job worth taking.
