The Bank Job
As finance
workers, both my brother-in-law and I were pretty happy when we heard the
Transporter’s next movie was called The Bank Job. We figured he’d finally decided to make a
movie depicting our way of life and were hoping for the Glen Fuckin’ Gary Glen Fuck-You Ross, Dickhead! of bean counter flicks.
I figured we could get that satisfaction of laughing at how they
misrepresent our profession like how cops probably laugh at cop movies and how
my science friends laugh at all the inaccuracies on doctor shows or how high
school graduates laugh at most movies.
It turns out
that this Bank Job is more like another job Transporter had a few years
ago called The Italian Job in that it’s more of a heist deal and not
very much like what I do all day. But he
must’ve gotten a promotion or the transporters union must have really come
through for him because this Bank Job is a much better job than The
Italian Job. I don’t mean to offend
any Italians who may be reading this, but I’m sure if they watched both movies
even they’d take The Bank Job and not look back.
This movie kinda borders on being better than it is in all directions but
never gets ambitious and just stays ‘pretty good’. It touches on all sorts of stuff but doesn’t
really take a big gamble and go for those themes whole hog. Like Jackie Brown, this film deals
with the theme of getting old and not having anything to show for one’s life,
and like Jackie Brown, the hero decides the answer is to steal a bunch
of money from some rich fucker. This
movie definitely doesn’t go as deep into its themes as Jackie Brown, but it
touches on that stuff.
You’ve also got
that whole British class system thing of people instantly judging each other on
their accents and being trapped in their caste and the such. In the case of this film, the main thing
being stolen is some lewd photos of Princess Margaret and other top
politicians. So you’ve got that whole
cockney class warrior thing combined with the British obsession with the Royal
Family.
As far as I
know from Wikipedia, one of the huge social achievements of the French
Revolution was that the proletariat gained the concession of occasionally
getting to gather around and laugh at photos of the bourgeoisie’s pee-pees and
cha-chas in the tabloids and sex tapes and the such. I believe Karl Marx called this “opium for
the masses”, but like I said, I’m an economist not a historian. But anyway, this film deals with that issue
(bourgeoisie pee-pees and cha-chas).
And this is kinduva strange movie for The Transporter in that it feels
like it actually had a script and like they did some rehearsals and had
locations and some wardrobe and stuff.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of his usual type of filmmaking where
they get some cameras, chuck a bunch of angry dudes in a room with a firehose and hope for the best, but it’s nice to see him
working in one of these more actual movie type movies for a change
too. He’s even got a family in this
film, complete with children[plural]!
And he’s got a
wife who looks like Abi Titmuss
with a breast reduction, which I guess for some of you means that this actress
doesn’t look enough like Abi Titmuss. But nonetheless, he cheats on her with this
young Jacqueline Bisset lookalike who’s part of his
heist crew. You might argue that it was
the heat of the moment and thrill of the big score that boiled over to their
affair in the vault of the bank they were ripping off, except that the whole
crew of robbers had actually just taken a nap so it’s hard to believe they
we’re that excited. And yes, you read
that correctly, this is the first time in a film that I’ve seen criminals
actually stop in the middle of a heist and take a siesta because they’re kinda pooped. It
actually caught me really off guard. But
then The Transporter and Jacqueline Bisset Lookalike
wake up before everybody else, and I guess they left their Scrabble board at
home, so they shag in the vault.
This Jacqueline
Bisset Lookalike works for me in a strange way. She’s got that same magic power that Ali
McGraw showed in The Getaway of technically being way too glamorous to
be working a heist with a bunch of toughies, but somehow pulling it off
credibly.
It’s good that
they make her character a working class girl who ditched the old hood and
became a fashion model and has now fallen on hard times, this really helps
account for her glamour and poise. They
get pretty daring with the casting by making the Not Abit
Titmuss Wife and Jacqueline Bisset
Lookalike both age appropriate for The
Transporter. It’s a big part of the
story that the three of them grew up together in a working class love triangle,
but normally the casting director would say fuck it and still cast women twenty
years younger than the male lead. So
hats off.
The rest of the
cast is pretty good too. I like that
they cast a guy who looks like a washed-up Harry Potter to play the porn
star. That made me smile. This movie also avoids a lot of the British
actors who normally show up in every British movie. There’s no Bob Hoskins, though he would’ve
been good as Porn King Vogel. There’s no
Daniel Craig, but I guess he’s too good for this type of movie now that he’s
moved on to fighting CGI polar bears and bodysnatchers. Vinnie Jones is nowhere in sight and he’s
pretty big so I doubt I missed him.
Despite all the fuss made about Sienna Miller I probably couldn’t pick
her out in a police line-up, but I don’t think she’s in this movie either. Neither of the Fiennes brothers show up. They don’t
even have Gwenyth Paltrow
with a fake accent. As far as I could
tell they didn’t even have that typical I-was-free-that-weekend casting
fluke where some British actor you thought was too good for this type of movie
shows up, usually Ben Kingsley or Kenneth Branaugh. I’m sure Jude Law must be hiding in the
background with a moustache in one scene somewhere because otherwise this is
all too hard to believe.
Overall, I was fine with a cast of relative unknowns,
but I would’ve liked more recognizable British tits. Several scenes in this movie take place in
strip clubs, brothels, and porn studios and this movie has more nudity than
you’d really expect. I would’ve liked to
see the Page Six all-stars as the various women in these scenes. Whenever I read interviews in British lads mags with Lucy Pinder, Keeley Hazell, Emily Scott, Abi Titmuss, Jordan, Sophie
Howard, etc they always go on about how they’d love to get into movies and I
think these roles were made for them.
They even have a dominatrix in this movie. I thought when you ordered a platex dominatrix suit in the U.K. that Sophie Howard just
came with it, but I guess I was wrong.
Although this
movie doesn’t add anything to what Du Rififi chez
les Hommes accomplished more than 50 years ago,
they at least don’t defy too much of what that film established. The main part being that when you steal from
people they get really pissed and come after you. Something that Ocean’s 11 missed,
unless that was the point and part of one of that Clooney guy’s highbrow
metaphors for Darfur or something. The second half of this film when the pissed-off rich people start
coming after our crew is definitely the more entertaining part. I would’ve liked a slow motion shot of an
actual turd literally hitting a fan to officially
mark the beginning of the second act, but that would be more of P.T. Anderson
virtuoso move.
The direction
is okay. They at least make a
half-hearted effort to get some of the hair and clothing styles of the 1970s
setting right. I really like it when
they try to make a movie look like it was made in the time period in which it
is set. Soderburgh
tried this with his movie The Good German [singular] but I think the
best I’ve seen so far has been what Spielburg did
with Munich. I would’ve loved it
if this movie had used graining film stock and jerky camera movements and
awkward zooms and shit, but they didn’t.
What they do have is the Transporter pulling a brick out of a wall and
whipping it at a guy’s head, an act in which the resourcefulness cancels out
the disrespect for masonry. So this film
isn’t totally without inventiveness or its priorities.
But other than
the shiny film stock and the fluidity of some of the camera movements this film
isn’t overly modernized. They don’t piss me off by adding a bunch of ‘snazzy’
‘current’ filmmaking ‘tricks’ to a 70s story such as using CGI to zoom through
a keyhole and down a ventilation shaft or some pointless bullet time shit. And the characters all have regular names
like ‘Terry’ and ‘Dave’ and they don’t do freezeframes
with each character or type their names on the screen; you find out the
characters’ names by hearing them mentioned in dialogue like in oldtime crime movies.
Overall, this flick
is worth a rent. If you liked Layer
Cake but didn’t feel you needed some high-minded pastry analogy getting in
the way of one guy chucking a brick at another guy’s head, then you’ll probably
like this film more, as did I. And if
like Jackie Brown, you’re getting old and planning on ripping off some rich
people so that you have something show for your life, this film might serve as
a cautionary tale because The Bank Job shows that nobody gets away
easy. However if you’re planning on
cheating on your wife with some Jacqueline Bisset lookin’ chick in a bank vault, then this film might serve
as an advisory or even encouraging tale since the Transporter’s Not Abit Titmuss Wife totally takes
him back.
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