'The Bank Job' Pays Off

Looking for the next great heist film? If so, look no further than "The Bank Job," because "The Bank Job" is the British heist film that's beginning to rake it in at the box office, and for good reason.

Based on the infamous 1971 robbery of Lloyds Bank in Marylebone, England, one of the biggest heists in British history, "The Bank Job" is an intelligent thriller with a great cast that delivers a clever plot that's so riveting you'll want to come back for seconds.

It's 1971 in East London and Michael X, a radical gangster causing trouble for the British government, is in possession of some compromising photos of a member of the royal family, which he is using to blackmail high-up government officials. To eliminate the threat of the photos being released, the family sets up a heist that entails breaking into the safe deposit boxes of the Lloyds Bank where Michael X has the photos stored. In order to keep the heist untraceable to the government, they work with a woman named Martine Love. She then pitches the idea to a group of small-time criminals, who are at first hesitant to take the job but eventually reconsider, going into action.

The plan is to purchase Le Sac, a leather goods store two units down from the Lloyds Bank, and then to tunnel below the next door eatery and up into the vault of safety deposit boxes. Terry Leather, the leader of the crew, recruits a few new guys and the heist begins. From then, the plot picks up and what seems like the perfect robbery turns into a deadly mess of sex scandals, corruption and murder that has the crew running for their lives.

"The Bank Job" stars Jason Statham ("Transporter," "The Italian Job"), Saffron Burrows ("Deep Blue Sea") and several virtually unknown actors. The main cast of anti-heroes is pretty well rounded and Statham gives a great performance as Terry Leather - surprising, considering his lackluster curriculum vitae.

In "The Bank Job," Statham portrays a likable family man who does a little crime on the side to get along. Statham gives his character depth, showing great promise as an actor, especially in scenes with his wife. With every wrong turn his character takes, Statham makes the part more believable as he has to deal with the repercussions of the crime.

The real credit goes to writers Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais for their smart handling of the intriguing script. In the trailer for "The Bank Job," the film seems comical and silly; however, with the exception of a comic line here or there, it's not really funny at all. Instead "The Bank Job" is one great ride, which may start out a bit slow for the first half hour, but picks up around the time of the heist and keeps up the pace. It delivers many twists and turns and pays off big in the end.


Grade: A-

El Orfanato

It’s Friday night, and you and your friends are headed to the movies to catch the latest horror flick that you’ve been dying to see. After months of watching the ever-so-creepy trailers pop up in between your favorite shows, you’re finally going to see the movie that will be sure to give you the scare of your life. You’ve got your popcorn, your perfect seats, the lights dim and…nothing. You leave the theater thoroughly disappointed because everything scary was in the trailer and the actors were just running around screaming the entire time. You think to yourself, “Well, I guess horror movies are never good movies,” making yourself feel a bit better about wasting the last ten bucks in your wallet. The Orphanage however, is in a class of its own, it’s not just a great horror movie, but a great movie as well. It doesn’t rely on gruesome deaths or special effects, but instead on a great script, perfect setting and phenomenal acting. I wouldn’t consider myself to be a person who rattles easily, so when someone gets decapitated in a movie, no big deal. However, a creepy little child in a long dark hallway wearing a dirtied burlap mask was enough to make me and the rest of the people in the theater scream out loud more than once.

The movie centers on Laura (Belen Rueda), who as a young girl spent some years in an orphanage on the Spanish coast until she was adopted, never knowing what became of the other children she had to leave behind. Many years later, after adopting a child of her own, Laura and her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo), decide to move into the old orphanage, which has been abandoned, making it into a home for sick and disabled children. Their seven-year-old son Simon (Roger Princep), who has imaginary friends, will now finally have other children to play with. Shortly before the opening of the orphanage, Simon befriends a new boy down at the beach named Tomas, who appears only to him. Five more children quickly become part of Simon’s circle of friends, creating elaborate scavenger hunts for him that border on menacing intentions. The grand reopening of the orphanage finally comes, and Simon is less than thrilled to meet the new children. He is perfectly content playing with his imaginary group of friends, which frustrates his parents. Carlos believes it’s because he is acting out for attention, while Laura is more skeptical of the situation believing it may have something to do with the orphanage itself. As Simon runs off to play in his imaginary world, Laura sees something that makes her question if her son’s friends are a little more than imaginary. Scared and confused Laura looks for Simon, and when she cannot find him she immediately becomes frantic and realizes that he has completely vanished.

Laura begins digging up the past, searching for answers as to what happened to the children from the orphanage and how it relates to her son’s disappearance. She soon becomes immersed in the world that Simon was so fixated with and eventually goes on a scavenger hunt of her own, set up by the children, to find her son.

The Orphanage is directed by newcomer Juan Antonio Bayona, and produced and presented by well respected director Guillermo del Toro, who made the critically acclaimed Pan’s Labyrinth last year. The Orphanage is this year’s Pan’s Labyrinth and a horror masterpiece, which has already been chosen by the Spanish Academy of Films as Spain's nominee for the 2007 Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film.

The real jewel of this movie though, is Belen Rueda, who delivers a performance that nearly brought me to tears. The relationship between mother and son is fixed in your mind throughout, so when Laura loses her son in the middle of the movie, you feel an intense sorrow for her. In other horror movies you’re just in it for the creative deaths, rooting for Paris Hilton to bite it in the most gruesome way in House of Wax, but in The Orphanage you really care about the family. Since Simon vanishes halfway through and Carlos doesn’t play too important a role, Rueda gets that much more credit for going it alone.

The Orphanage is definitely the must-see of horror movies this year with its quick paced story and its scream out loud scares. I guarantee you will be seeing more of Juan Antonio Bayona in the future, and if the writer’s strike ever ends, you’ll definitely see it pick up some awards at this year’s Oscars.

Grade: A