Jason Statham

The Bank Job (2008) Film 4 is a Jason Statham film, which means it’s going to be bad. As bad as as a Steve Seagal? As bad as a Schwzenegger or any of those other kung-fu kind of action heroes –I’m thinking Van Damme, Vin Diesel and all the other white Van lads- that are so bad they are actually quite good? Well it wasn’t too bad, which says nothing at all. I’m not going to spoil the film by telling you the story. Most Stathan films are just one big car chase after another. This one is a bit different. No cars. Well, there were some cars. Stathan plays the everyday cockney geezer who runs a used car lot and is in hock to some local gangsters. When the lovely Safforn Buroughs suggests that he should get together a crew and rob a bank he doesn’t immediately agree, but the clue is in the film title. Beside if the every lovely Saffron asked him to tie up Skippy the Bush kangaroo and cut one of Bambi’s legs off and eat it I’m sure he would have agreed and if he didn’t I’d my hand waving in the air saying I’d do it. The real danger was in her high cheekbones. They were so sharp I’m sure Statham cut himself when kissing her, but despite the obvious danger he persisted in acting as if it was a chore. She was also having it off with some old Etonian type with access to the highest government circles of, well, old Etonians. It was MI5 or M16. Nobody was quite sure, but they’d hooked Saffron into working for them and she’d hooked the new boys’ spiv team up to help her tunnel into the vault of a London bank, something like Lloyds or TSB, but that would be too ironic. Some black revolutionary group had pictures of a member of the Royal family doing something weird, probably reading ‘The Sun’ and they had to be got at any cost. It was all strictly non-kosher, everything hush-hush and muddling on. The gang get a bit of a break when tunnelling into the safety deposit vault. They hit an old underground graveyard from the bubonic plague, or something. It’s the modern equivalent of a superhighway straight into the bank vault. There’s a problem, of course, and isn’t those lucky bones. A radio ham is monitoring the walkie-talkie calls with the gang’s lookout. But they get away with the loot. Kinda. The bad guys with secrets that need keeping are after them. The bent cops that protect the bad guys are after them. And the bent old Etonians are after everybody. So it’s a race to see who can come up with the most clichéd outcome. One of the things that interested me was Statham. He’s meant to be tough. Despite the designer stubble someone seems to have spent a lot of time on enhancing his eyelashes. In some scenes they’re more kohl than cool. No surprises there, or at least none that I can see. Damn those Bambi eyes.

Comments

wait.....we like Statham over here! Seagal's a fat slob, and his kung fu's way off.

ah, kung-fu, David caridine, bruce lee-of course- there's a gang of them aren't there. Van Damme. Action heroes don't say much, but everything gets blown up and they sort it. Seagal's interesting because he's so uninteresting. Thanks for reading.