Period Films: The Bank Job
Last Tuesday me and my friend Shabiki could have seen either seen The Bank Job or 500 Days of Summer. If my hipster teenage cousin knows about this choice, she’d go halfway around the world to kick my ass. We got to the place ten minutes after nine, or ten minutes after sunset in Toronto. I didn’t know that we got to the place 50 minutes after the movie started, a move that would make Woody Allen burst a blood vessel.
ph. Lionsgate DVD
Martine Love, a fashion model/childhood friend/lover of working class car shop owner Terry (Jason Statham) tips him and his friends off to rob a branch of a not-so-major bank in London, the team unknowingly used as pawns to recover compromising pictures of a royal family member – the fast one. Eventually the team finds out that the safety deposit boxes in said bank have more compromising pictures and documents that corrupt politicians and business owners desperately want returned.
Watching a movie cold, if those are the proper words, means that I wouldn’t know that the events portrayed within the film really happened. In 1971. I guess the brown leather, the brown wool, the popped collars, large lapels and the turtlenecks should have tipped me off. I guess black and brown are timeless. Besides, the movie probably prioritized on letting us see Terry beat the shit out of someone, talk bad-ass, wear a suit and maybe take his shirt off if you were patient enough. Watching the first 50 minutes of the movie made me see the pastel of typical 70’s films. The infrastructure should have tipped me off too, but then I was just thinking ‘That’s just the UK being quirky.’
I hate the phrase, but for a Jason Statham movie, it’s pretty subtle. Yes, there’s a lot of sex, and the movie dangles the possibility that Terry’s kids could be harmed but thankfully they weren’t. There’s class conflict and shift in power portrayed but again it’s for the audience members who want to see it this way. There’s a brown guy in the team and multiculturalism on the most part is a footnote instead of a ‘token.’ Martine, who gets his hands dirty, isn’t fully blamed by the mostly male team members. Although the film’s depiction of black people makes me feel uncomfortable. Also, there are lots of nudity and children were watching.
Nonetheless, I kinda feel like watching The Expendables or Mesrine now.
Okinawa Assault 