READ MORE: Scene Stealer Saffron Burrows

GLENN KENNY'S REVIEW (posted 3/5/08)

This movie announces itself as both a period piece and a throwback with its opening frames: an unknown female in a '70s-cut bikini bottom cavorts in a blue pool as the innuendo-laden opening riff of T-Rex's "Get It On (Bang A Gong)" inspires involuntary toe-tapping. "Based on a true story," the movie's titles have told us just seconds before, and if that's in itself a fact — you never know, these days — then it's one of the most god-damnedest true stories ever. From the bikini bottom in the pool we go to a cabana or something on a tropical island, and the bikini bottom's having orgiastic sex with two locals whilst an unknown man snaps them in action. We then get a "1971 — One Year Later" scene followed by a "3 Weeks Earlier" scene, but worry not — soon The Bank Job, expertly directed by oft-ill-employed Roger Donaldson settles in to a linear, engaging, suspenseful groove. Donaldson and screenwriters Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais — who have a lot of atoning to do for Across the Universe and by my lights accomplish it here — evoke, for some viewers of a certain age, The Hot Rock, $, and The Thomas Crown Affair (Mach I, that is); others of a younger set will, we hope, be happy to watch Jason Statham actually act for an hour and a half before pulling out any martial arts moves.

One of the things that makes the picture work is its unusual setup. Those tropical-sex porno shots feature, as it happens, a member of Britain's royal family, and the photographer, a murderous pimp who's masking his sinister motives behind a pretense of black activism, has the snaps in a safe-deposit box in a relatively obscure London bank. Would-be drug-dealer Martine (Burrows), caught by the fuzz in customs, appeals for mercy to the MI6 agent she's been sleeping with (Lintern); he proposes the titular bank job, and Martine recruits rough-hewn Terry (Statham), a would-be auto-shop entrepreneur with some gambling debts, to put together a crew and tunnel into the safe-deposit vault. Terry's not let in on the real reason for the heist; all he and his crew need know is that there are riches in the other hundreds of boxes down there.