The Bank Job

Surprisingly based on a true story, The Bank Job follows a group of amateur crooks who find themselves positioned as pawns in a series of political manoeuvres. MI5 up-and-comer Tim Everett (Richard Linten) is on a mission to retrieve highly incriminating photographs from a local bank vault, but the catch is that he can not leave behind any trace of his involvement. He operates through the street-savvy Martine Love (Saffron Burrows), and she’s the one who seductively lures Terry Leather (Jason Statham) and his friends out of small-time crime and into serious business. Throw in a Trinidadian thug, a manipulative bordello owner and a handful of corrupt police, and things are bound to get a little complicated. Full kudos are due to the screenwriters for negotiating this twisted storyline with such skill and flexibility. The Bank Job will sweep you up and into this fantastically convoluted journey, and yet it retains that rare ability to make an audience laugh at the sheer ridiculousness of its narrative.

Roger Donaldson’s directing is pitch-perfect. His last cinematic effort, The World’s Fastest Indian, was bloated by its own sense of self-importance, and was all about the heavy emotional scores, trite dialogue and tear-jerking character developments. Donaldson seems much more comfortable back in the action genre, working with a film that refreshingly operates under no such false pretences. From its title to final credits, The Bank Job is unashamedly a heist film, and we’re all the better for it. The characters are all recognisable (Tim Everett channels something of James Bond and every archetypical villain is present in full form), but somehow they become all the more enjoyable in their supposed realism. And, even though these criminals lack the pure charisma of Danny Ocean and co., there’s something quite amiable about their never-ending blundering and that manages to keep us on their side the whole way through. This is heist the way it should be; tense, yet not without a sense of fun.

This is England

Like so many films out there, This is England is another fine lesson in “don’t judge a movie by its promotional material.” The fliers will tell you that this is another ‘rite of passage’ classic, in which a young boy learns that 'violence is the coward’s answer,' while the trailer plays up the film’s isolated moments of heart-wrenching pathos, as if the entire film were focused solely upon the plight of its 12-year-old protagonist, Shaun (played to perfection by newcomer Thomas Tugroose.) In fact, Shaun is but a lens through which the audience is invited to view a far larger and more widespread predicament. From the start, he is a mere pawn in someone else’s toxic game play.

From its opening credits (a collage of authentic news footage), this autobiographical effort leaves no question of context unanswered. This is England is firmly rooted in the midst of Margaret Thatcher’s debilitating regime, during a time rife with hostility, racism, mass unemployment, xenophobia and lingering bitterness about the Falklands controversy. It is in this anxiety-ridden context that we meet Shaun; a scruffy, bullied adolescent struggling to cope with the recent death of his father. On his way home from school one day, the desperate Shaun is rescued by Woody (Joseph Gilgun), a skinhead with good intentions, and thus Shaun finds himself drawn into a world of shaved heads, Ben Sherman shirts, suspenders, Doc Martens, and much older girlfriends (in what is a bizarre but intriguing exploration of pre-pubescent sexuality.) The trouble begins when a much older member of the gang (Stephen Graham) is released from prison, and Shaun, vulnerable and naïve, is ideal prey for his hard edged, overtly racist preaching.

Shaun is the narrative’s catalyst, but in no way is he its central focus. Rather, this film is more of a portrait of the times. It at once conveys the passionate spirit and crushing desperation of the time, (a roughed up version of Degrassi High?), while simultaneously capturing all the period’s complexities; shifting notions of masculinity, the irreconcilable clash between racism and nationalism, and, yes, the complexity of growing up in a country so deflated by its own desperation. There are unnecessarily sappy moments within this film (the overtly emotional musical score is at times at odds with the hard-edged narrative, and some of the nationalist spiels are accompanied by cringe-worthy montages), but, on the whole, this is a deeply moving and highly powerful film. Arguably, this is Shane Meadow’s most mature, and most successful, cinema effort yet.

Rating: 8.0