Magic Review: The Bank Job

The Bank Job is a dramatic portrayal of the events surrounding the 1971 Baker St robbery in England brought to us from Australian director Roger Donaldson (The Recruit, Dantes Peak). The film offers a very cool line up including career tough guy Jason Stantham (The transporter), Saffron Burrows (Boston Legal) and a variety of other unheard of yet great supporting actors. I enjoyed this film which has all of the elements of a good action movie including corruption, sex, deception and murder. The robbery of the baker street bank sees the assailants come across a photo of a certain member of the royal family along with a shit load of money and details of a local crime bosses activities. This puts the team in hot water with a variety of gangsters, MI5 and other groups which are on the trail of the robbers.  Whilst watching this movie I was constantly thinking how much of the story was fact and how much was just dramatic overtones. After looking into it I realised that this is pure drama and the facts really were that Llyods bank was robbed, a radio operator overheard the team who communicated on walkie talkies and after the robbery was found out the government issued a D-Notice which caused all media coverage of the event to stop. This raised speculation that a British member of the royal family was involved is some sort of scandal. It was until last year that some of the truth was discovered. The film also involves 70's black power member Michael X (Englands Malcolm X) who was a drug dealer and stand over man who was prominent in the London Underworld at the time. I enjoyed this film and thought that some of the performances were great. I did however feel at times like I was watching the Italian Job (2003) again and it ironically boasted one of the same actors. I would recommend this movie only if you could not find anything else interesting to watch.

Magic Rating: 6.7/10