Touches You

Thanks for the memories!

For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

This is one of Jason Statham's best films. When watching this film, you will really enjoy it. There was not a dull moment from start to finish. Staham is highly underrated and should be in the top ten of male actors. The fact that the movie was based on factual events makes it the more enjoyable. After watching this movie you will want to go back and follow his career movies and wonder why he has not received more credit for being such a great actor. Put this in your movies to watch at least once a year and you will really enjoy it each time. The British really know how to make moving pictures, in my opinion they really out rank the American ones, and I am an American.

Scripted with a light touch by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais and directed with considerable verve by Roger Donaldson, The Bank Job is a combination of heist movie and conspiracy thriller. It's a speculative account of what lay behind the actual robbery in 1971 of a branch of Lloyds Bank in London's Baker Street. Amazingly, a radio ham recorded the thieves' walkie-talkie conversation while they worked and alerted the cops, but no one was brought to justice.This was just a year before Watergate and the film's producers claim that whereas the Washington break-in opened the greatest can of worms of the 20th century, the scandal the London robbery would have revealed was squashed by the government issuing a D notice in the interests of national security.A case of life imitating art, the robbers borrowed their plan from Baker Street's most famous resident; Sherlock Holmes's tale 'The Red-Headed League' details how thieves tunnel into a bank vault from a shop down the street. The sympathetic minor villains, led by Jason Statham, have been conned into this caper by a beautiful model with underworld connections (Saffron Burrows), who's being blackmailed by the security- service people.She's after a safety-deposit box containing compromising photographs of a British princess having sex with a couple of black studs in the Caribbean. The pictures are being used by evil Black Power charlatan Michael X, respected friend of John Lennon and Yoko One, seen here dining with him, for blackmail purposes to keep the law at bay. But after a successful heist, the crooks discover that in addition to money and jewelry, they also have the account book of a Soho vice king (David Suchet) recording his bribes to the cops and compromising photographs of toffs, civil servants and politicians from the deposit box of a fashionable brothel-owner.So the hapless crooks are pursued by MI5, the Special Branch, ruthless gangsters, bent bogeys, a single honest cop (the one good apple in the Met's barrel) and the royal family in the form of a benign Mountbatten. The film races along with the speed of a bullet train, catches the 1960s ethos just as it had gone totally rancid and is a great deal of ugly, subversive fun.

After seeing something in the region of 20 million British films released in the first decade of the 21st Century I eventually came to the conclusion that at least 19,999,990 were gangster films with a sub heading of " Cheeky gangsters try and steal some money . Thank you for creating us Guy Ritchie " . With a screen writing team of Le Frenais and Clements best known for their comedy scripts and with a starring role for Jason Statham who shot to fame in LOCK STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS one could be forgiven in thinking that THE BANK JOB sees Statham turn full circle and return to the sort of tongue in cheek movie that kick started the British cinema crime boom In some ways this is exactly how the movie plays out . A bunch of likable London geezers commit a heist only to find that some very unlikable villains aren't happy about it . Where it differs from the Guy Ritchie classic is that it's supposedly based on true events . You can work out who the real life Royal family member is but apart from that the rest of the characters are vague . It's interesting that the film ends with a caption saying that names have been changed to protect the guilty but one can't help thinking the guilty might only exist in the minds of the production team . It also leads to a rather incomprehensible ending that'll have you sneering " yeah right " Another problem is that Roger Donaldson is no Guy Ritchie . This isn't necessarily a major criticism and you do think perhaps if he did try to emulate Ritchie's style then he would have probably made a mess of it . It is some what noticeable that everything is a little bit flat and workman like on a visual level . Matthew Vaughen's LAYER CAKE did manage to bring something new and refreshing to the British gangster movie unlike here where everything chugs away nicely but there's nothing outstanding

It was interesting, except for the annoyingly bad acting by the main actress. I'm not usually one to notice bad acting, but in this case, her lines are read as bad as a school student would.The main male actor was fine.It was different that other heist movies, so you won't be too bored.It's funny seeing the English stereotypes, the posh MI6 and the low-class police. With voices, side-burns and so on to match. Along with an immigrant, black drug lord to boot.Worth watching? Yes, if you don't mind watching a movie full of strong English stereotypes.