The Bank Job
|
List Price: Our Price: $1.35 You Save: $8.63 (86%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of The Bank Job
Movie Review: Excellent !
Summary: 5 Stars
This movie was really good! Lots of action, mystery and a part of history that was interesting to learn about. I understand, not everything in the movie was acurate but it was BASED around a real story - and that works for me. It was a R-rated movie for a reason(violence and sex). I was on the edge of my seat!Movie Review: Great movie & acting!
Summary: 5 Stars
Great movie if you love action, British humour & good acting. Jason Statham at his best! Good storyline with semi historical info tossed in to the usual Statham romp. A++Movie Review: The Bank Job
Summary: 5 Stars
Excellent movie a comedy mixed with drama and real events. Great cast headed by Jason Statham all likable villians.Well worth watching. I give it a 10 out of 10.Movie Review: Unexpected
Summary: 5 Stars
I bought this because of Jason Statham and was not disappointed but found I was profoundly surprised at how much I enjoyed the whole film.Movie Review: A Surprisingly Fresh Take On A Classic Heist Formula
Summary: 4 Stars
If you've seen any of Jason Statham's past films than you've effectively seen his newest DVD release: The Bank Job. More The Italian Job than Crank, though, The Bank Job is action packed, but it, too, is not simply a "shoot-em-up" popcorn flick; much thought goes into who the men and women on-screen are and what their motivations are for getting into the line of work that they do. Full of mind games (between characters and with the audience) and twists involving the sordid sexual histories of important government power players, The Bank Job is flashy and sensational in a way that screams Hollywood formula... and yet it was based on actual evens.
Directed by Roger Donaldson, The Bank Job attempts an intricate look at the elaborate layers of covert deceit that supposedly went into the United Kingdom's greatest bank robbery of all time. By all accounts, Statham's Terry Leather-- a man in over his head with some very bad people who gets hired to rob a safety deposit box and unknowingly stumbles onto some compromising photos of members of the royal family--should be a sexy character. He (partially just due to Statham's bright eyes and wry smile) is somehow soft and gentle (at least by comparisons to some of Statham's earlier work) as the family man who just got in over his head and is now forced into a new way of life. He flits between puppy dog eyes and suave masculinity, offering subtle hints of the rough and tumble bad guy persona for which women (and okay, a few men) everywhere have fallen.
The Bank Job tries desperately to be a cool and sexy film, and in most areas it does succeed. Donaldson and his Cinematographer, Michael Coulter, captured the essence of the 1970s with everything from shot design to color schemes to focusing on the wardrobe and scenery, all which screamed "period piece." In keeping with the thematic emphasis of showcasing new media and technology, The Bank Job was shot in HD, which gives its images a crisp, clear view of a somewhat hazy world: on one hand, Leather is a petty criminal, committing a serious offense, but on the other, he is taking down those far worse than he, and he is doing it for all the right reasons. Most importantly, though, The Bank Job makes the audience yearn to be apart of its world, even when its seedy: you want to live in that era, and you want to be in Leather's company.
The use of "cutting edge" technology in The Bank Job should also be something about which to get excited: deemed the "Walkie Talkie Robbery" of 1971, the star of the event is really the ham radio that picks up their own radio signals and clues in the police force. Unfortunately Donaldson does often choose to linger instead on the extremely literal depictions of what's sexy on screen: a topless woman swimming in the ocean, for example, which is an image that opens the film, as well as his female lead, Saffron Burrows, as the temptress who propositions Leather with the job offer. At times the film is a bit gratuitous. Though each crew member (from Stephen Campbell Moore to James Faulkner) has their own back story which manages to get semi-fleshed out, as a whole The Bank Job follow Leather's journey, and therefore his friends fall by the wayside a little bit, getting somewhat lost in the in the stereotypical traps of fictionalizing a real life drama into an action flick.
The two-disc version of The Bank Job on DVD includes a commentary by Donaldson, Burrows, and Composer J. Peter Robinson, which isn't half bad if you can get past the fact that the film's star is noticeably absent from the recording session. There are the obligatory deleted scenes, all which total out at under ten minutes and don't offer anything that isn't already depicted in the film in a more succinct way, making it pretty obvious why these were left on the proverbial cutting room floor. The standard behind-the-scenes featurette this time is "Inside The Bank Job," which is just as straight forward as it sounds but does offer some insight into the project past simple reminiscence or fluffy hype. However, "The Baker Street Bank Raid" is hands-down the most interesting "extra:" a featurette for those who are interested in true crime, in addition to cinema's depiction of such events, as it focuses on historical footage and interviews from the 1970s, cutting back and forth between the real life bank robbery and how it was depicted in the film. The only special feature on the second disc is a digital copy of the film, making the extra few dollars you will spend on that version entirely superfluous.