Martine offers Terry a lead on a foolproof bank hit on London's Baker Street. She 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.
Mei, a young girl whose memory holds a priceless numerical code, finds herself pursued by the Triads, the Russian mob, and corrupt NYC cops. Coming to her aid is an ex-cage fighter whose life was destroyed by the gangsters on Mei's trail.
Director:
Boaz Yakin
Stars:
Jason Statham,
Catherine Chan,
Chris Sarandon
A thief with a unique code of professional ethics is double-crossed by his crew and left for dead. Assuming a new disguise and forming an unlikely alliance with a woman on the inside, he looks to hijack the score of the crew's latest heist.
Director:
Taylor Hackford
Stars:
Jason Statham,
Jennifer Lopez,
Michael Chiklis
Mercenary Frank Martin, who specializes moving goods of all kinds, surfaces again this time in Miami, Florida when he's implicated in the kidnapping of the young son of a powerful USA official.
Chelios faces a Chinese mobster who has stolen his nearly indestructible heart and replaced it with a battery-powered ticker that requires regular jolts of electricity to keep working.
Directors:
Mark Neveldine,
Brian Taylor
Stars:
Jason Statham,
Amy Smart,
Clifton Collins Jr.
Frank Martin puts the driving gloves on to deliver Valentina, the kidnapped daughter of a Ukrainian government official, from Marseilles to Odessa on the Black Sea. En route, he has to contend with thugs who want to intercept Valentina's safe delivery and not let his personal feelings get in the way of his dangerous objective.
Director:
Olivier Megaton
Stars:
Jason Statham,
Robert Knepper,
Natalya Rudakova
When his mentor is taken captive by a disgraced Arab sheik, a killer-for-hire is forced into action. His mission: kill three members of Britain's elite Special Air Service responsible for the death of his sons.
Frank is hired to "transport" packages for unknown clients and has made a very good living doing so. But when asked to move a package that begins moving, complications arise.
Business is slow for Terry Leather, a London car dealer, married with children. He's an artful dodger, so Martine, a former model with a thing for him, brings him her scheme: a bank's alarm is off for a couple weeks, so let's tunnel into the vault. He assembles a team, not realizing her real goal is a safe-deposit box with compromising photos of a royal: she needs the photos to trade for avoiding a jail sentence - and MI-5, or is it MI-6, is pulling the strings two steps removed. A Trinidadian thug, a high-end bordello owner, and a pornographer also have things stored in the vault, so the break-in threatens many a powerful personage. Is there any way these amateurs can pull it off?Written by
<jhailey@hotmail.com>
Aldwych station was chosen to film the underground scenes because the true Tottenham Court Road station had been modified extensively in the early 1980s. Only Edgware Road still has any resemblance to its original look. See more »
Goofs
Martine's coat goes from buttoned to unbuttoned several times while she and the other robbers are talking in the warehouse just after the robbery. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Eddie Burton:
[while drilling a mileage meter back]
Another Terry Leather low mileage gem.
See more »
Crazy Credits
Disclaimer: "The names of many people identified in this film have been changed to protect the guilty." See more »
If "The Bank Job" were fiction, it would be a fairly decent robbery caper. As it is, "The Bank Job," a veritable documentary and realistic whodunit, is awesome.
Unlike most films, this one requires a couple of advance tips: First, watch it with the improbable idea in mind that most of it is actual, hard-to-believe truth; second, don't be impatient. As the story of a 1971 bank robbery begins, the setting in London, the parade of seemingly unconnected stories and characters is rather confusing, complex, disjointed. But stay with it - there is a crescendo of excitement and excellence.
The true elements of "The Bank Job," some hidden until recently by Britain's "D Notice" censorship law (modified in 1993, becoming DA, or Defense Advisory) are these:
1. A big bank robbery did take place on Baker Street in 1971, culprits never found, money never recovered. After initial big headlines, the story disappeared from the newspapers.
2. There was serious police corruption in London in the 1970s, cops on payrolls of drug dealers and pornographers.
3. Princess Margaret was involved in a series of affairs, some caught on compromising photos which were not published by the otherwise relentlessly sensational British press, under the D-Notice rule.
4. There was a militant British black-power advocate, called Michael X, involved in a one-man, multi-country crime wave. (In 1971, John Lennon paid for Michael X's bail, something not mentioned in the film.)
"The Bank Job" director Roger Donaldson (of "No Way Out") brings together all these true threads in a way that may be true even in its totality, director and cast prevailing over some shoddy work from too many writers.
The content is all true, the context is excitingly possible. Did the government, in trying to prevent exposure of Princess Margaret by evidence in Michael X's possession, mastermind the bank robbery? Was MI-5 or MI-6 (says a policeman in the film: "I never remember which is which") involved, and actually assisting the robbers? Again, possibly.
The cast is remarkable: Jason Statham is the ringleader, the bad guy of "Transporter" and "The Italian Job" turning into a scourge of the really bad guys. Saffron Burrows, James Spader's vamp nemesis on "Boston Legal," brings her remarkable name and looks to the criminally and emotionally ambiguous major female role.
Peter De Jersey is a totally scary Michael X; David ("Poirot") Suchet is a frightening crime lord; and a whole host of top British stage actors fill in big roles and small ones. Don't be misled by reviews speaking of a so-so thriller - "The Bank Job" is a great deal more than that, even to the point that you may want to see it more than once.
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If "The Bank Job" were fiction, it would be a fairly decent robbery caper. As it is, "The Bank Job," a veritable documentary and realistic whodunit, is awesome.
Unlike most films, this one requires a couple of advance tips: First, watch it with the improbable idea in mind that most of it is actual, hard-to-believe truth; second, don't be impatient. As the story of a 1971 bank robbery begins, the setting in London, the parade of seemingly unconnected stories and characters is rather confusing, complex, disjointed. But stay with it - there is a crescendo of excitement and excellence.
The true elements of "The Bank Job," some hidden until recently by Britain's "D Notice" censorship law (modified in 1993, becoming DA, or Defense Advisory) are these:
1. A big bank robbery did take place on Baker Street in 1971, culprits never found, money never recovered. After initial big headlines, the story disappeared from the newspapers.
2. There was serious police corruption in London in the 1970s, cops on payrolls of drug dealers and pornographers.
3. Princess Margaret was involved in a series of affairs, some caught on compromising photos which were not published by the otherwise relentlessly sensational British press, under the D-Notice rule.
4. There was a militant British black-power advocate, called Michael X, involved in a one-man, multi-country crime wave. (In 1971, John Lennon paid for Michael X's bail, something not mentioned in the film.)
"The Bank Job" director Roger Donaldson (of "No Way Out") brings together all these true threads in a way that may be true even in its totality, director and cast prevailing over some shoddy work from too many writers.
The content is all true, the context is excitingly possible. Did the government, in trying to prevent exposure of Princess Margaret by evidence in Michael X's possession, mastermind the bank robbery? Was MI-5 or MI-6 (says a policeman in the film: "I never remember which is which") involved, and actually assisting the robbers? Again, possibly.
The cast is remarkable: Jason Statham is the ringleader, the bad guy of "Transporter" and "The Italian Job" turning into a scourge of the really bad guys. Saffron Burrows, James Spader's vamp nemesis on "Boston Legal," brings her remarkable name and looks to the criminally and emotionally ambiguous major female role.
Peter De Jersey is a totally scary Michael X; David ("Poirot") Suchet is a frightening crime lord; and a whole host of top British stage actors fill in big roles and small ones. Don't be misled by reviews speaking of a so-so thriller - "The Bank Job" is a great deal more than that, even to the point that you may want to see it more than once.