There's more to 'Bank Job' than a simple heist story

The film's title may make it sound like a generic crime vehicle and the casting of B-action star Jason Statham -- a stalwart tough guy with stocky presence and limited range -- may not inspire confidence.

Yet "The Bank Job," a British heist thriller based on an actual London bank robbery, is more interesting than such superficial particulars might suggest.

In the real-life "Walkie-Talkie Robbery," a crew cleaned out the safe deposit boxes of a small East London bank over a weekend, and the story became an instant headline grabber. But after a government gag order, it disappeared from the media. Speculation and urban legend took over in the vacuum left by the news blackout. "The Bank Job," written by old hands Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, is based more on rumor and supposition than fact. It's a highly entertaining set of hypotheses.

Statham stars as a family man with a dodgy past who is inexplicably handed a major opportunity by an old flame (Saffron Burrows). She has her own agenda but no idea of the true scope of the crime and its repercussions. The colorful gang of small-timers discovers that there's more than merely loose cash and stashed jewels in the boxes when MI5 agents, corrupt cops, local underworld figures and compromised government officials race to recover the loot.

Roger Donaldson is a smart director who seems to thrive on this scuffed-up script. He juggles a complicated story with oodles of peripheral characters without dropping a subplot. And he brings a refreshingly physical dimension to the logistics and practical mechanics of criminal activity in an era before cell phones and computer hacks.

The efforts to sweeten the ending feel forced in the aftermath of the violence and Statham feels far more in his element as a criminal leader than a doting family man, but those are mere quibbles in the compelling chaos unleashed by Statham and company and pulled together by muscular storytelling.