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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
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Bank Job, The
Lionsgate
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FILM:
MPAA RATING: R for sexual content, nudity, violence and language
Starring
Jason Statham,
Saffron Burrows,
Stephen Campbell Moore,
Daniel Mays,
James Faulkner,
Alki David,
Michael Jibson,
and
Richard Lintern
A car dealer with a dodgy past and new family, Terry has always avoided major-league scams. But when Martine, a beautiful model from his old neighborhood, offers him a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street, Terry recognizes the opportunity of a lifetime. Martine targets a roomful of safe-deposit boxes worth millions in cash and jewelry. But Terry and his crew don't realize the boxes also contain a treasure trove of dirty secrets--secrets that will thrust them into a deadly web of corruption and illicit scandal that spans London's criminal underworld, the highest echelons of the British government, and the Royal Family itself. This is the true story of a heist gone wrong in all the right ways.
(Lionsgate)
| GENRE(S): |
Suspense/Thriller
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| WRITTEN BY: |
Dick Clement
Ian La Frenais
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| DIRECTED BY: |
Roger Donaldson
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| RELEASE DATE: |
DVD: July 15, 2008
Theatrical: March 7, 2008
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| RUNNING TIME: |
110 minutes, Color |
| ORIGIN: |
UK |
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
91
Entertainment Weekly
Owen Gleiberman
One of the pleasures of The Bank Job is that it returns us to the days when robbing a bank was a gritty, hole-in-the-wall affair.
91
Baltimore Sun
Michael Sragow
The gritty heist picture The Bank Job has everything adult action fans could want, starting with a grand, fact-inspired gimmick.
80
Salon.com
Stephanie Zacharek
Entertaining and subtle at once, it doesn't just dazzle us with the hows and whys of a particularly wily brand of thievery; it transports us to a specific time and place that often seems to fall between significant eras. The Bank Job is set in a country that's in transition, an extended metaphor for the way its characters are in transition, too.
75
New York Post
Kyle Smith
Jason Statham, possibly the greatest B-movie leading man of this era, stars in a complicated and clever imagining of what might have happened in the mysterious 1971 London bank heist dubbed the "Walkie-Talkie Robbery" - in other words, it was unbelievably high-tech.
75
San Francisco Chronicle
Steve Winn
A brisk, entertaining crime thriller.
75
Christian Science Monitor
Peter Rainer
Nothing more than an efficient time-killer with the added bonus of being based on a real misadventure. But, unlike its benighted cast of characters, it gets the job done without a hitch.
75
Philadelphia Inquirer
Carrie Rickey
Feels both absolutely of the 1970s and absolutely fresh.
75
ReelViews
James Berardinelli
A heist movie in the classic tradition - it details every aspect of the caper, from its genesis to its aftermath. The fact that there's political intrigue and espionage swirling around the edges only makes it more fascinating.
75
Premiere
Glenn Kenny
The suspense aspect works like mad, but what's also noteworthy is the character component, which at times evokes a "Smash Palace"-era Donaldson.
75
Chicago Tribune
Michael Phillips
Slick, ice-cold and enjoyable, The Bank Job is a bit of all right.
75
Rolling Stone
Peter Travers
Dull title for a juicy, fact-based caper movie that's full of surprises I have no intention of spoiling.
75
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Sean Axmaker
Based more on rumor and supposition than fact. It's a highly entertaining set of hypotheses.
75
TV Guide
Maitland McDonagh
A surprisingly tight, clever, twisty heist tale.
75
Charlotte Observer
Lawrence Toppman
Statham fans weaned on the adrenaline flowing through "The Transporter" and "Crank" may feel short-changed, but the rest of us can appreciate the unassuming, old-fashioned craftsmanship of The Bank Job, which is based on a true-life heist.
75
USA Today
Claudia Puig
Imagine a blend of "Snatch," "Ocean's 11" and "The Italian Job." Then juxtapose the staples of the caper genre with real events involving national security and high-level corruption, and the result is The Bank Job.
70
Wall Street Journal
Joe Morgenstern
The Bank Job engages us fully with a tale that's well-fashioned more than anything else, a fascinating study of morality at several levels of English society, and of honor, or the lack of it, among implausibly likable thieves.
70
Dallas Observer
Robert Wilonsky
Statham's totally believable. He might yet become Bruce Willis.
70
Washington Post
Desson Thomson
What makes director Roger Donaldson's movie greater than zany heist fare is that this particular robbery really happened and that this episode illuminated an almost moral clash between the haves and the have-nots of Great Britain.
70
The New Yorker
David Denby
The actual robbery that the picture is based on is shrouded in mystery, and the screenwriters, Dick Clement and Ian La Fresnais, have engaged in a fair amount of entertaining invention.
70
Los Angeles Times
Kevin Crust
The film dawdles at times. but for the most part Donaldson keeps just the right amount of tension present in each scene.
70
Time
Richard Schickel
There is not a lot of scintillating dialogue in The Bank Job, but there are plenty of kinky sexual allusions and it includes a torture sequence about as brutal as anything you're likely to see in the movies these days.
70
Chicago Reader
J.R. Jones
Fascinating: supposedly the crooks kept all the cash and jewelry, but their sponsors in the MI5 were really after sexually explicit blackmail photos of Princess Margaret and other aristocrats that were being held by the revolutionary Michael X.
67
Portland Oregonian
M. E. Russell
One doesn't want to oversell the film; you could catch it on DVD and regret nothing. But, frankly, in a marketplace that tends toward cranked-up action thrills, it's just nice to watch a level-headed crime movie aimed at actual grown-ups.
67
Austin Chronicle
Josh Rosenblatt
Unlike the other great caper films of the last 10 years, like "Ocean’s 11" and "The Italian Job" – stylish affairs in which punishment is close enough to give the audience a sense of lingering danger but never so close that it gets in the way of the technological fetishism and love of tailored shirts that apparently make grand larceny such a kick – the blowback in The Bank Job is real and ugly and involves some sort of pneumatic paint-stripping machine that would freak out the Coen Brothers.
63
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Rick Groen
Semi-decent, somewhat okay, not-half-bad.
60
The New York Times
Manohla Dargis
The workmanlike title The Bank Job is a nice fit for this wham-bam caper flick.
60
Variety
Leslie Felperin
An engrossing if underwhelming period thriller.
60
The Hollywood Reporter
Frank Scheck
A slow-paced and often confusingly plotted crime drama that never lives up to the delicious potential of its premise.
60
Film Threat
Stina Chyn
The Bank Job secures the viewer’s attention pretty quickly and does not relinquish that hold for a second.
58
The Onion (A.V. Club)
Scott Tobias
Donaldson also misses the chance to score some easy laughs from his petty criminals, who are infinitely more audacious than they are competent.
50
Miami Herald
Connie Ogle
What The Bank Job ends up stealing is all your precious time.
50
Boston Globe
Wesley Morris
The movie doesn't hang together as a thriller, and the characters don't hang together as interesting people.
 The average user rating for this movie is 7.6 (out of 10) based on 47 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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