The Bank Job

Roger Donaldson stages the September 1971 tunnel into the Lloyds vault on Baker Street. In the real burglary the gang rented a leather goods shop two doors along, dug roughly 12 metres and worked across 3 weeks of weekends. The strongest material is not invented: a radio amateur, Robert Rowlands, taped the gang talking to their rooftop lookout, and lines from those recordings are spoken in the film. The producers admit inventing Martine, played by Saffron Burrows. The conspiracy around the raid is invented too. The claim that the press was gagged by a notice is undocumented, and the journalist Duncan Campbell says no such request was ever made. In the real case 4 men were caught; in January 1973 three got 12 years and one got 8, and part of the money was recovered. Baker Street was built as an exterior set at Pinewood, with location work in the closed Aldwych Underground station and Chatham dockyard. The tunnel is done by the midpoint; what remains is bargaining over the contents of the boxes, police corruption and blackmail: Jason Statham’s crew spend the second half negotiating, not digging. A good fit if you want the robbery to become a negotiation once the boxes are open. Not for anyone who came for the digging, which the film passes through quickly.