(Long Island, NY) I’m horrible with accents. Call me uncultured or whatever, but if someone has a thick foreign accent, it just takes me a while to get my ears around it. Thus, viewing The Bank Job, a new crime caper film starring the always great and normally understandable Jason Statham, was a tad more difficult than normal for me. Or rather, it was until I had acclimated myself to the British cast’s thick Cockney, a dialect normally spoken by working class Londoners in the East End. You know, the H-dropping lot (“‘ello! ‘ere is me ‘ouse!”). Fortunately, the aural difficulties I had to endure didn’t stop The Bank Job from being a very solid and entertaining film.
Supposedly, The Bank Job was based on an infamous real-life 1971 robbery (of a bank, if the film’s title is too complex for you) in Baker Street, London. Of course, when it comes to cinema, the words “based on a true story” should always be taken with a grain of salt – facts and names are always changed, blanks have to be filled in, and the bottom line is never the truth, but the entertainment value. Perhaps “inspired by” or “something kind of like this might have happened, maybe” would be more accurate to say, but I digress.
As the film opens, the viewers are treated to a sexual tryst involving three young ladies that is, unbeknownst to them, being chronicled by a gentleman positioned outside their window with a camera. After this fun little prologue, we’re introduced to Terry (Jason Statham), the owner of a failing car lot under siege by brutish debt collectors who respond to
his delinquency by trashing the vehicles on his lot. Recognizing the dire straights he is in, Terry is approached by an old friend named Martine (Saffron Burrows), who informs him of some inside info she has regarding a bank whose alarm system is in the process of being replaced, leaving its safe deposit box vault temporarily defenseless for the weekend. Seeing this as an opportunity to clear his debts and start elsewhere with a clean slate, Terry recruits some of his petty-criminal friends to assist him in knocking over the bank.
Now by this point, I had yet to fully adjust to the heavy-duty accents of these blue-collar Brits, so almost nothing anyone was saying was making any sense to me. The majority of the dialogue sounded something like crows going “caw caw caw caw caw,” but enough recognizable words were squeaking by that I managed to keep up with things…for the most part, anyway.
So, Terry’s hastily assembled team rent a shop two stores away from the bank and start tunneling their way underground to the vault, drawn by thoughts of the riches that await. Unbeknownst to them, however, Martine has not been entirely forthcoming with all the facts regarding this operation. It turns out that she’s really the thrall of a government MI5 agent who happens to be quite interested in acquiring the contents of one safe deposit box in particular. What box might that be, you ask? Well, the one that contains the pictures of the naughty three-way described above, of course, pictures taken by one Michael X (Peter de Jersey), a black militant using the existence of the photos to keep himself out of prison. It seems that one of the participants of said three-way was, in fact, Princess Margaret of the British royal family, and the government is desperate for the pictures not to leak to the public (lesbianism must be frowned upon over there, for some strange reason). MI5 (the British equivalent of the USA’s CIA) hopes to use to covertly recover the photos using Terry’s gang by proxy. I guess they’re lucky this all happened in 1971- nowadays, Michael X could have just posted Princess Margaret’s pictures on his MySpace page and they’d be all over the internet in seconds.
Okay, by this point of the movie, things started clearing up for me. More and more words I knew were getting across to me- no longer was I simply hearing “caw caw caw caw caw.” It was more like “caw ‘ey! Let’s rob caw caw bank! Jolly good caw let’s grab a pint! Blimey caw!” I really need to see someone about this affliction I have with British films, because I’ve seen movies from that fine country with much harsher accents on display so I should not have had the problems I had with The Bank Job. Maybe I’m just not that bright.
No, no, that couldn’t be it.
Onward. Terry and the gang finally break into the vault and make a sizable haul. Martine, who has tagged along, manages to locate the pictures but is discovered in the act by Terry. Recognizing the subject of the photos, he realizes that he’s not only been used, but is in some major hot water as a result, and is none too happy about it. However, even at this point, he couldn’t even begin to guess the trouble he’s gotten himself into. After making their getaway, the robbers find themselves engulfed in a cloak-and-dagger cover-up operation ranging from the highest levels of government to the depths of
the organized criminal underworld. Will our blue-collar thieves manage to use their savvy and street smarts to get away with the heist of the century, or will they all be lead like lemmings to their doom?
The Bank Job was an exciting, fast-paced movie bustling with personality and bad teeth (this is England, after all). I’ve been a fan of Jason Statham for a long time, and while I enjoy his typical roles as an action movie hero, it was a refreshing change of pace to see him tackle a role a bit more understated and realistic for once. However, his British accent was far more pronounced that I’ve ever heard it before (in tune with the rest of the cast), which makes me wonder if he’s either been toning it down in his previous films, or if this is how the man really speaks (I hope not- caw caw caw). Speaking of the rest of the cast, they all did a fine job, with no one appearing to be mis-cast or failing to hold up their end of the bargain. It helps to buy into a movie’s reality when every actor involved manages to disappear into their roles, especially when it attempts to portray seedy and flawed characters like The Bank Job does. British films tend to do that better than many, it seems.
As for the whole “based on a true story” thing, it must be said that The Bank Job is, in fact, based somewhat on historical facts. Most of the plot I outlined did in fact happen, although most of the details of the 1971 incident were suppressed by way of a government D-Notice, which in England is an official request to the media not to publish or broadcast specific items, for reasons of national security (though it’s only a request- people can be jerks and ignore it if they really want). Despite the producers of The Bank Job claiming to have an “inside source” into what really happened, many of the small details (such as the character of Martine) were entirely made up, and it’s really not possible to separate fact from fiction.
So, in closing, The Bank Job is a good movie, teeming with oddball British charm and grittiness. Don’t hold my complaints about the whole Cockney accent thing against it, although in my defense I wasn’t the only one in the theater confused by the British equivalent of Ebonics, so take that as you will. Just go see it, and please email me afterwards and tell me how confused you also were as well so I feel better. Thank you.
