Jason Statham may have enjoyed the greatest successes of his career and built his entire screen persona around utilizing his martial arts prowess to roundhouse kick countless disposable henchmen in the face across a series of B-level actioners, but the 53 year-old isn’t entirely all about fighting and shooting in a consistent stream of mid-budget genre films.
In fact, one of his best efforts hardly features a single punch being thrown at all, and it isn’t even an action movie. The Bank Job arrived on Netflix today, and the relatively straightforward heist pic stands out among his filmography as an adaptation of a true story. Obviously, the project is still a star-powered thriller and plays fast and loose with the tale behind London’s 1971 Baker Street robbery, but it remains a diverting enough and entertainingly underrated Statham vehicle.
The Bank Job was a modest commercial success after bringing in close to $65 million at the box office on a $20 million budget, while the critical consensus has pegged it as one of the finest movies of the leading man’s entire career, as it currently holds a more than solid Rotten Tomatoes score of 79%. However, over the last decade, it’s become lost in the shuffle as the former competitive diver continued to cement his reputation as one of action cinema’s foremost names.
Veteran filmmaker Roger Donaldson’s direction is efficient without being spectacular and the broad strokes of the narrative are hardly revolutionary, but based on how often forgotten action thrillers tend to dominate the Netflix Top 10 most-watched list, The Bank Job stands every chance of troubling the rankings for at least a couple of days now that it’s been added to the content library.
Published: Feb 1, 2021 01:14 pm