.THE BANKING JOBS

The Bank Job, staring Jason Statham as a small time London hood who owns a used car dealership/chop shop, is purported to be based on a real life bank robbery that took place in 1971 in which unknown robbers ransacked the contents of a safety deposit vault. How much of the movie is true and how much is fiction is opened to interpretation. The known facts are these. On the night of September 11th, 1971, robbers tunneled into the safety deposit vault of a branch of Lloyds at the corner of Baker and Marylebone in London from a closed leather goods shop called Le Sac and made off with large amounts of cash and other valuables. A ham radio operator picked up conversations between the robbers and their rooftop lookout. Four days after the robbery, the British government issued a "D Notice" which effectively censored all media coverage of the robbery for reasons of national security.The story of the film suggests that the real purpose of the robbery was to recover incriminating photos of Prince Margaret, the sister of the Queen of England, that were being used by a black activist and criminal calling himself Michael X to avoid prosecution for drug trafficking. Terry Leather, the character played by Jason Stratham, is contacted by an old friend Martine, played by Saffron Burrows.The reason for robbing the safe deposit vault is that the money and valuables contained within are there to avoid reporting them to the government, such as Inland Revenue, the British equivalent of the IRS. Therefore the owners would not report the valuables as being missing, complicating the investigation of the crime.Little does Terry know is that Martine is really working for British Intelligence, who are after the incriminating photographs. Also complicating things, when Terry and his crew break into the vault and ransack it, they discover other items other people would like kept secret. These include a ledger detailing payoffs to the and films and photos of Members of Parliament engaging in unusual sexual acts with prostitutes.