When it comes to history, there are sometimes stories so compelling they must be made into a movie. This is the case with the new bank heist film, The Bank Job. Based on the real life events of the infamous London Baker Street robbery in 1971, the movie follows one of the largest robberies in English history. While, at times it’s a very interesting and thrilling story, sadly, cliché and melodrama almost ruin the film.

A band of amateur crooks led by Terry Leather (Jason Statham) are commissioned by Terry’s close friend, Martine Love, (Saffron Burrows) to rob the safety deposit boxes at Lloyds Bank on Baker Street. After they break into the boxes and find the loot, they realize they were hired to steal compromising photos of a British royal. The robbery affects agents from the British agency M-I-5, a porn director, corrupt cops, dirty politicians and a criminal British activist all with competing interests that make life a disaster for Terry and his gang. The Bank Job is fortunately able to balance all these characters and angles without diverting from the main storyline.

Although the film has decent direction, acting and cinematography, it has flaws as well. The music is extremely generic and stereotypical and at some points this can frustrate the viewer. There is solid acting from Statham, who pulls off one of his best acting portrayals since Snatch, and co-star Burrows is solid. While the two principal performances shine, the supporting cast consists of only mediocre to fair actors, but most of them act well enough to not be distracting. Sadly, another shortcoming of the film is that it adds a subplot of marital infidelity that not only distracts from the rest of the film, but also resembles more of a soap opera than an actual engaging drama. With these things aside, The Bank Job is a decent British film that is somewhat like an interesting, but a flawed R-rated version of The Italian Job.

The film could put-off some moviegoers because there are moderately strong sexual themes throughout the film, especially near the beginning of the movie. Besides that, the soap opera moments and the ineffective music, The Bank Job is a decent picture to check out in either the first or second run theaters.

The Bank Job is rated R for sexual content, nudity, language and violence.