thomas4cinema

In order to take posession of some incriminating pictures of a royal family member, an institution that has probably a fancy acronym, but that I call “Royal Family Reputation Maintenance Task Force” initiates a bank robbery through which those pictures can be withdrawn from the control of a politically inconvenient character. While being used for higher purposes, the group of bank robbers does the best it can to mess it up, but succeed in several ways that is most annoying to the well-dressed Royal entourage.
When checking where the hell I have heard the name of the director Roger Donaldson before, I realised that I watched a lot of his films (Dante’s Nonsense Peak, Naked Species, Cadillac Man is getting on my nerves… and I do not even mention Cocktail, even though I do…), but half-liked only one: Thirteen Days. All these films looks so much different from the Bank Job. Those slick Hollywood productions with their machine-generated production design and their arbitraily exchangeable character actors (Brosnan, Cruise, Costner, pfff). But here? Brilliant cast almost throughout, with particular honours to the smart, handsome and immediately approachable Jonathan Statham and Richard Lintern (as Tim), who dresses, looks and orders drinks as if the James Bond role was up for grabs again. How you can play such a slimy tuxedo-Tim and still be sympathetic is beyond me, but I liked him and did not blame him for getting the hot chick Martine occasionally (played by Saffron Burrows, who looks much better in film than on IMDB).
A sympathetic English 1970s film-alike, with cute characters, not enough tension to keep you awake at night, but thoroughly enjoyable.