"The Bank Job"
Directed by: Roger Donaldson

Starring: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Daniel Mays

MPAA rating: R Running time: 110 minutes

Best suited for: "British invasion" heist fans

Least suited for: "Rambo"like action fanatics (this isn't your typical Statham romp)

Director Guy Ritchie made Jason Statham a star in 2000's nouveau gangster classic "Snatch"- Statham's not quite a household name in America, but certainly a staple figure celebrated by heist and crime genre fans.

Statham's characters have usually been the antithesis of Britain's iconic James Bond- charismatic and capable but with an uncanny ability to convince us they were doomed for failure.

For those of us who find credible entertainment in cheeky Brit imports like "Formula 51," "The Italian Job" (Michael Caine's 1969 version), "The Transporter" and "Layer Cake," Statham more or less represents the cream of the crop.

An actor whose range of expression seemed to wander between quiet exasperation and incredulity, Statham probably hit stride (with a genre-specific U.S. audience) in "The Transporter 2."

There he played tough guy Frank Martin, his most Bondlike role to date, in a film complete with a plot and feats of derring-do almost as outlandish as those in any Bond fable.

So it's kinda nice, for credibility buffs, to find Statham returning to a more realistic, reliable role.

In "The Bank Job" he plays Terry Leather, who's coerced into robbing a safe deposit vault with a bumbling crew. What the audience knows, and Terry Leather doesn't, is that the bank job is a double-cross from the very beginning, doomed to failure for a variety of reasons.

What some of the audience also knows- and what I believe we should know before seeing "The Bank Job"- is that the film is based on an actual 1971 heist.

Since the plot concerns corrupt British officials, a brothel (prone to fetishes), radical fanatics and even secret agents, one wonders just how far director Roger Donaldson stretched credibility. But since the infamous London heist is already one of legend (in certain circles) rife with innuendo and many unanswered questions, the film may indeed be truer than one might think. For heist fans, that's hard to beat.

I suppose the best praise I can offer is that "The Bank Job" is probably a very good picture for folks who don't necessarily enjoy heist films. The bloodletting is minor- but expect a few brief, violent moments- and the plot is relatively straightforward, without the elaborate hocuspocus of Spike Lee's "Inside Man" or the lavish improbability of George Clooney's "Ocean" series.

Still, there are enough twists and turns to prevent "The Bank Job" from becoming stale or predictable, and the ending is indeed surprising (a kudo for any film in the heist genre, whose conclusions are often preordained). Terry Leather actually sheds a tear or two here- an entirely new direction for a Statham character- and all in all, I'd say "The Bank Job" is fairly good filmmaking.