The Bank Job Movie Reviews

I saw this movie thinking it to be something like "The Italian Job" , where a bank was robbed by making a space from below the vault ( in this case , making a tunnel from a nearby temporarily closed shop) , and it to be a bit entertaining and spicy.

On going through further details at a movie site , I found it to be a true story based on the bank robbery held in 1971. However , the movie claims to have shown the real mystery of that time but how true it is , I dont have an idea.

 Plot- The plot is interesting. A team of thieves are hired to rob a bank , to get to the dirty secrets of some scandalised peoples in the forms of some documents and photographs but the catch was that they were not told this.They were asked to rob the bank and keep the whole amount to themselves , giving them some documents , whose importance were unknown to the robbers till the time the cat gets out of the bag and they realise how big trouble they are into , also finding themselves surrounded by anti-social people hunting them for some criminal and illegal social activities hidden in those safe deposit boxes of the vault , whose secrecy was at stake, involving big names of the society. The movie ends haphazardly giving an indication about what happened later on and also giving some incidences for the same.

The acting was decent enough , indeed worth watching.  The big fix was that the most honest people I found were the robbers themselves , so if I keep the fact in mind that this story was real , we really cant judge as to whom to trust in this real world ???

Movie is worth a watch but the end is a bit cheesy . So, don't expect much out of the direction and acting , just concentrate thinking it to have had happened in 70's and you will find yourself enjoying every bit of it.

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Based on partial true story of a bank heist, the makers of this movie claim to put all the missing puzzle pieces together - after 37 years. The robbery dubbed "the walkie-talkie robbery" is based on the actual heist at Lloyds bank one weekend in 1971.

The robbers dug a 40 feet tunnel to the bank safe deposit vault. During the robbery, the police get wind of it through an amateur ham-radio operator who accidentally intercepts communications between the robbers and a roof-top look-out stationed outside the bank. Although the cops listened in on the live conversation between the robbers, they could not identify the bank that was being robbed from the hundreds of banks in the vicinity of where the radio transmissions were intercepted.

Four days after the robbery took place, there was a gag notice issued causing the story to disappear from the media. In fact, four of the robbers were arrested in '73; however, their names and sentences to this day have not been disclosed. Most of the loot has never been recovered. These are the actual events on which the movie is based....

The producers of the movie claim to have an internal source who provided them pieces of the story. As a movie, it is certainly worth a watch. The director, Roger Donaldson does a great job of building up the band of robbers giving a brief account of their day-to-day lives and the reason for their loyalty to one another. In Jason Statham, we have an up and coming action movie hero who leads this group of stublebum robbers. Performances of the rest of the characters are ok - it is the plot that captivates rather than the performances.

If you watch this as a piece of fiction, you will find it worth it, except that the ending is a bit lame which is why the plot gets 3 stars from me. However, if you are looking for some facts, the movie raises more questions than help answer some. Such as, how could MI-5 rely on a some petty crooks to execute such a heist? If it was indeed MI-5 who mastered the whole idea of the heist, would they have not interferred with the police who got wind of the robbery as it was occurring to ensure success?

While the bit about royalty being involved sounds indeed highly plausible, the robbers getting away with Lord Mountbatten handing them what they demand seems flimsy. But then again, it is a mixture of reality that was known so far, some vivid imagination and possibly some inside info. All in all, as depicted in the movie, the robbers are the most honest folks compared to all the rest of the characters involved!!

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