BLU-RAY
REVIEW: THE BANK JOB

07/13/08

With “The Bank Job”,
Director Roger Donaldson brings us his best action movie to
date. Unlike “Species” (1995) and “The Recruit” (2003), in
“The Bank Job” Mr. Donaldson keeps the tension throughout
and manages to construction a complicated web of blackmail
and corruption.
Jason Statham (Terry Leather) a former two-bit criminal is
trying to go straight with his used car dealer business.
However, he runs into a former girlfriend Martine Love
(Saffron Burrows) who tells him about the perfect heist: a
bank that will have it’s alarm system disabled over the
weekend. Terry gathers his cronies and while they’ve never
done something so big, they decided to go for it. If they
manage to pull it off, they can all retire. The one thing
they don’t know is that Martine Love’s contact is with MI5
(Military Intelligence Section 5) and while he doesn’t care
much about what they rob, he wants Love to obtain the
contain of security box number 118. Security box 118 holds
compromising pictures of princess Margaret belonging to a
man known as Michael X. Michael X uses the pictures to
blackmail the courts, so he is able to run his criminal
enterprise without repercussions. Terry and his gang manage
to pull off the heist and steal a bunch of money, jewels,
the content of box 118, and a bunch of other documents that
a lot of powerful people are welling to do anything to get
back. Now some of Britain’s most powerful are after Terry
and his gang and Terry tries to use what he has to better
his situation.
While the setup of the movie was a little complicated
because of the characters and situations they introduces in
the first ten minutes, it all starts to make sense about
thirty minutes into the movie. The setup for the heist was
excellent and the heist itself is what I would call classic.
The only thing about it that bothered me was that the bank
robbers took a nap in the middle of the job.
While the movie is based on a true story a lot of movie is
based on fiction or on what the writers think happened since
most of the story is still classified. However, the writers
did a good job coming up with the situation and the setup
leading up to the ending was excellent, but the ending
itself was not. They had too nice of a setup, that the
ending couldn’t quite keep up with it
The casting was excellent. Everyone was believable in their
role. Jason Statham took the next step in his career by
taking a role that requires more than just punching and
kicking to the sounds of a loud soundtrack.
Lionsgate has done another excellent job with the release of
this Blu-ray disk. The washed-out colors look beautiful in
high definition and just about every scene looks perfect and
I was unable to find a single flaw. The 2-Disk special
edition also includes a behinds the scenes look, a short
documentary on the actual Bank Job, Deleted and Extended
Scenes and a digital copy for your PC or Mac.
Review
By Milton Brayson
milton@smartcine.com
VIDEO:
Widescreen Version (2.35:1)(1080P High Definition)
AUDIO:
English 7.1 DTS
Master Audio, French 5.1 Dolby Digital Audio
Subtitles: English, English SDH, Spanish
SPECIAL FEATURES:
Audio Commentary with Director Roger Donaldson,
Actress Saffron Burrows and Composer J. Peter Robinson
Inside Bank Job
- A behind-the-scenes look at “The Bank Job“ with director
Roger Donaldson talking about how he loves doing true
stories. (16:44)
The Baker Street Bank
Raid - The real events behind “The Bank Job“. A must
see for anyone who enjoyed the movie. (14:53)
Deleted and Extended
Scenes with optional commentary - A montage of
deleted and extended scenes hardly worth seeing. (6:15)
Disc 2
Standard Definition Digital Copy of The Bank Job
RATING BREAK DOWN:
FILM REVIEW |
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VIDEO |
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AUDIO |
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BONUS
FEATURES |
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