The Bank Job

This article is about the film. For the TV quiz show, see The Bank Job (game show).
The Bank Job

Promotional film poster
Directed by Roger Donaldson
Produced by
Written by
Starring
Music by J. Peter Robinson
Cinematography Michael Coulter
Edited by John Gilbert
Production
company
Distributed by Lionsgate
Release dates
  • 29 February 2008 (2008-02-29) (UK)
Running time
 111 minutes
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Budget US$20 million[1]
Box office US$64.8 million[2]

The Bank Job is a 2008 British heist-thriller film written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, directed by Roger Donaldson, and starring Jason Statham, based on the 1971 Baker Street robbery in central London, from which the money and valuables stolen were never recovered. The producers allege that the story was prevented from being told in 1971 because of a D-Notice government gagging request, allegedly to protect a prominent member of the British Royal Family.[3][4] According to the producers, this film is intended to reveal the truth for the first time,[5] although it includes significant elements of fiction.

The premiere was held in London on 18 February 2008, and the film was released in both the UK on 29 February 2008, and in the US on 7 March 2008. It was a critical and financial success.

Plot synopsis

The British Security Services (MI5) have taken interest in a safe deposit box that is located in a bank on London’s Baker Street. It belongs to a black militant gangster, Michael X (Peter de Jersey), and contains compromising photos of Princess Margaret,[6] which he is keeping as insurance to keep the British authorities off his back. Martine (Saffron Burrows), an ex-model who is romantically involved with an MI5 agent, is caught smuggling drugs into the country, and to avoid going to jail she makes a deal with the authorities in which she agrees to retrieve the photos.

Martine approaches her friend Terry (Jason Statham), a struggling car salesman with criminal contacts, and tells him if he can assemble the gang to help her rob the bank he will be richly rewarded, though she does not tell him about the photos in the deposit box. Terry recruits a small team, including one of his own workers, Eddie (Michael Jibson), to serve as the look-out, and Dave (Daniel Mays), a porn actor who once made films for Lew Vogel (David Suchet), a gangster whom Dave happens to run into outside the bank before the robbery.

The gang tunnels their way into the bank vault, where they steal money and other valuables, but Terry is suspicious when he notices that Martine only seems to be interested in one box containing nothing but photographs. After they escape together, Terry throws off a pursuit by MI5. By now the police have been alerted to the robbery by a ham radio operator who has picked up the "chatter" from the gang's walkie-talkies, and Lew learns that among the missing safe deposit boxes is his own box, which is full of evidence about his payoffs to crooked cops. He notifies a furious Michael X in Trinidad, who correctly suspects Gale Benson (Hattie Morahan), Hakim Jamal's lover, of spying for MI5, and subsequently murders her. Lew decides that Dave’s presence outside that particular bank was not a coincidence, and has him tortured for information. Dave gives in, and Lew goes to Terry’s garage to kidnap Eddie. Meanwhile, a government minister learns that he is also featured in some of the stolen photos, and persuades MI5 to give the robbers new passports and safe passage in exchange for the photos in order to avoid a scandal.

One of the crooked cops on Lew's payroll shoots Dave, and threatens to shoot Eddie unless Lew gets his evidence back. Terry agrees to deliver it to him at Paddington station at the same time he is supposed to be picking up his new passports from MI5, but has meanwhile passed on the details to an honest cop, Roy, who alerts MI5 agents. During the exchange, Lew recognises the agents, and he and the corrupt cops make a run for it. Terry pursues Lew and proceeds to beat him up, but Roy breaks up the fight and arrests Lew and his colleagues. In Trinidad, Michael X is also arrested. With his freedom and his new passport, Terry and his family are seen enjoying a carefree life on their small motor yacht off a sunny beach.

According to the epilogue, the corrupt police officers on Lew's payroll were duly investigated, and Michael X was hanged for Gale Benson's murder. It also says that Michael X's personal files are to be kept hidden until 2054 and that £4 million worth of property was stolen. Lew was imprisoned for eight years for crimes unrelated to the robbery. At least 100 safe deposit box owners have neither claimed insurance nor identified the items in their boxes.

Cast

Screenshot illustrating how a special outdoor set was constructed for production of the film

Historical background

The film is in part based on historical facts about the Baker Street robbery. A gang tunneled into a branch of Lloyds Bank at the junction of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, in London, on the night of 11 September 1971 and robbed the safe deposit boxes that were stored in the vault. The robbers had rented a leather goods shop named Le Sac two doors down from the bank, and tunneled a distance of approximately 40 feet (12 metres), passing under the Chicken Inn restaurant that was located between the shop and the bank.[4] The actual tunneling took 3 weeks working on weekends.[4]

Robert Rowlands, a ham radio operator, overheard conversations between the robbers and their rooftop lookout. He contacted police and tape-recorded the conversations, which were subsequently made public. The film includes lines recorded by Rowlands, such as the lookout's comment that "Money may be your god, but it's not mine, and I'm fucking off."[7]

The film's producers said that they have an inside source, identified in press reports as George McIndoe, who served as an executive producer.[8] The film's plot point of the issuance of a D-Notice, because a safe deposit box held sex pictures of Princess Margaret with London gangster-turned-actor John Bindon, is entirely fictional. The possible connection to Michael X is apparently based on information provided by McIndoe, though the basis and extent of his information remains unclear. The Daily Mail interviewed a convicted robber, who claims to be a perpetrator and he indicated that embarrassing photos including child pornography was found but deliberately left behind for the police.[4] The film-makers acknowledged that they made up the character Martine, and David Denby in The New Yorker wrote that it is "impossible to say how much of the film's story is true".[9]

The fictitious character of Lew Vogel may in part allude to pornographer and racketeer Bernie Silver,[10] a key figure in Soho in the 1960s and early 1970s, who was jailed in 1975 for the 1956 murder of Tommy "Scarface" Smithson; and also to later events surrounding his associate the real-life pornographer James Humphreys. After an outcry in 1972 when the Sunday People published photographs of the head of the Metropolitan Police Flying Squad, Commander Kenneth Drury, spending a luxurious two-week holiday with Humphreys and their wives in Cyprus, a police raid on Humphreys' house uncovered a wallsafe containing a diary cataloguing detailed itemised payments to seventeen different officers. Humphreys was jailed for eight years in 1974 for wounding his wife's former lover. He then turned Queen's Evidence, testifying against some of Scotland Yard's most senior officers in two major corruption trials in 1977; for which he received a Royal Pardon and was released from prison.[11] In 1994 Humphreys was jailed for twelve months for living off the earnings of prostitutes.[12][13]

The movie includes multiple historical grace notes. The outlandish introduction of Michael X's character showing him leading a Jewish landlord locked in a slave collar is not dramatic license but is based on a similar historical incident.[14] An unremarked passing glance at a photo of John Lennon found in Michael X's safety deposit box is inspired by John Lennon's support for Michael X's "Black house" headquarters depicted in the film, and Lennon posting his bail.[15] A moment of great tension in the film, where the police visit the vault while the robbers are inside, did occur. Not only did the robbers use the spectacular thermal lance shown in the film, but went even further and employed explosives. Contrary to the epilogue, Michael X was not tried and executed for the murder of Gale Benson, but rather for the murder of another commune member by the name of Joseph Skerritt, who was found buried along with Gale. It is also not true that Michael X's personal files are to be kept hidden until 2054.[16]

Production

The production crew visited the Historic Dockyard in Chatham to shoot the sequence at the side entrance of London Paddington Station where the final showdown between Terry and Lew Vogel takes place.[17]

Part of the filming took place on location at the offices of Websters, 136 Baker Street where the rooftops were actually used for lookout purposes. The majority of outside shots, namely shots including the bank and adjacent shops, were done on a specially constructed set of Baker Street, to retain an authentic feel of the period and to allow for greater control of visible elements. This partial set was extended using VFX by the Australian company Iloura.[18]

Reception

The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports that 79% of critics gave the film positive reviews based on 142 reviews. The consensus reads: "Well cast and crisply directed, The Bank Job is a thoroughly entertaining British heist thriller."[19] Metacritic reports the film has an average score of 69 out of 100 based on 32 reviews.[20]

Box office performance

The film grossed US$64.8 million.[21] The film opened at No. 4 in North America and grossed US$5,935,256 in 1,603 theaters, averaging to about US$3,703 per cinema.[22]

Soundtrack

References

  1. ↑ "The Bank Job Box Office Data". The Numbers. Nash Information Services. Retrieved 8 October 2011.
  2. ↑ "The Bank Job (2008)". Box Office Mojo. 5 June 2008. Retrieved 11 April 2013.
  3. ↑ Thorpe, Vanessa (11 March 2007). "Untold story of Baker Street bank robbery". The Guardian. London. Retrieved 25 May 2010.
  4. 1 2 3 4 "Bank job that opened the door on a royal sex scandal". Daily Mirror. 16 February 2008.
  5. ↑ Production Information, Lionsgate UK website, Accessed 9 January 2008
  6. ↑ "How MI5 raided a bank to get pictures of Princess Margaret", Evening Standard, 20 May 2007
  7. ↑ Hoyle, Antonia (16 February 2008). "FOUND: Radio Ham's sensational tape of the bank heist 'that rescued compromising pictures of Princess Margaret'". Daily Mail. Retrieved 17 March 2008.
  8. ↑ Lawrence, Will (15 February 2008). "Revisiting the riddle of Baker Street". The Daily Telegraph. London. Retrieved 17 March 2008.
  9. ↑ Denby, David (10 March 2008). "Class Acts: "The Bank Job" and "The Duchess of Langeais"". The New Yorker. Retrieved 17 March 2008.
  10. ↑ Paul Byrnes, Review: The Bank Job, Sydney Morning Herald, 25 July 2008
  11. ↑ Barry Cox, John Shirley, and Martin Short (1977). The Fall of Scotland Yard. Penguin Books. ISBN 0-14-052318-9.
  12. ↑ 'Emperor of porn' jailed for running prostitution ring, The Independent, 2 July 1994
  13. ↑ Andrew Weir, Jimmy and Rusty, The Independent, 4 July 1994
  14. ↑ Naughton, Philippe (23 June 1970). "Man In Michael X Centre led in 'slave collar'.". London: The Times. Retrieved 13 November 2008.
  15. ↑ Bill Harry, The John Lennon Encyclopedia.
  16. ↑ The National Archives catalogue shows six files relating to Michael X, all of which were made public before the film was made. Unreleased files appear in the catalogue while still restricted, but there are none such relating to Michael X.
  17. ↑ Kent Film Office. "Kent Film Office The Bank Job Film Focus".
  18. ↑ "The Bank Job. Making Of". iloura. Archived from the original on 2011-07-06.
  19. ↑ "The Bank Job Movie Reviews, Pictures". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 31 December 2008.
  20. ↑ "The Bank Job Reviews, Ratings, Credits". Metacritic. Retrieved 7 March 2008.
  21. ↑ "The Bank Job (2008)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 11 June 2008.
  22. ↑ "The Bank Job (2008) – Weekend Box Office Results". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 10 March 2008.
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