Last weekend, we “watched” a movie. However, as I suspect will become quite typical, we watched it on DVD, at home, in snatches of 15-30 minutes, punctuated by a whisper of “your turn” then one of us attending to Harriet. (She was a little unwell, and wasn’t sleeping as well as she would normally at that time.) Despite this, and a little surprisingly, I really enjoyed the movie!
The Bank Job
Facinating retelling of the 1971 Baker St robbery
Maybe it’s just my recent enjoyment of the conmen in the UK TV series Hustle, but I really enjoyed this fictionalised take on how some real-life British criminals conducted a major bank heist in 1971. Normally you need to suspend your disbelief in watching a movie, but given that a large number of the circumstances in this movie are actually true (and more of them than you might expect), skepticism is replaced with astonishment.
So it was with a sense of astonishment at the gall, luck and intelligence of these criminals that I found myself sucked into the plot. It is quite complex, with much of the film providing a set-up for the last 30-40 minutes. Although, it wasn’t until this last part that I found myself really enjoying the film. In this way, it reminded me a little of The Thomas Crown Affair, another film I really enjoyed.
Watching the DVD in one respect was better than the film would have been, as the DVD contained a mini documentary on the facts behind the Baker St robbery. This reinforced the incredible nature of the case, showing that sometimes fact is much stranger than fiction.
My rating: stars
