Tags: Alistair Petrie | Alki David | Colin Salmon | Craig Fairbrass | Daniel Mays | David Suchet | Don Gallagher | Georgia Taylor | Gerard Horan | Hattie Morahan | James Faulkner | Jason Statham | Keeley Hawes | Michael Jibson | Peter Bowles | Peter De Jersey | Richard Lintern | Saffron Burrows | Sharon Maughan | Stephen Campbell Moore

Inspired by the infamous 1971 robbery that took place at the Lloyds Bank in Marylebone London, The Bank Job stars Jason Statham (Transporter, Snatch, Crank, Italian Job) and Saffron Burrows (Klimt, Enigma). The highly-charged heist thriller tautly interweaves high-level corruption, murder and sexual scandal in 1970s England...

Inspired by an extraordinary true event, a daring, unsolved robbery, which took place more than 35 years ago in London. A highly-charged thriller, directed by Roger Donaldson and starring Jason Statham and Saffron Burrows, it interweaves a heady combination of intrigue, scandal and danger and has been described by its producers as "an amazing untold story of murder, sex and corruption".

Jason Statham ("Crank", "Transporter 1 and 2", "The Italian Job") stars as Terry, the car dealer with a dodgy past and Saffron Burrows ("Klimt", "Enigma") is Martine, the successful model from his old neighbourhood who inveigles her old flame and his friends into undertaking the bank robbery.

The extensive cast features an abundance of British acting talent, including Stephen Campbell Moore ("The History Boys"), Daniel Mays ("Atonement"), James Faulkner ("Colour Me Kubrick"), Alki David ("The Freediver"), Michael Jibson ("Flyboys"), Richard Lintern ("Syriana"), three-time Bafta nominee David Suchet (TV's "Poirot"), Peter de Jersey ("Holby City"), Georgia Taylor ("Coronation Street"), Hattie Morahan ("Bodies"), Keeley Hawes ("A Cock and Bull Story"), Peter Bowles ("Freebird"), Colin Salmon ( "Die Another Day") and Sharon Maughan ("Another Stakeout").

Acclaimed filmmaker Roger Donaldson ("The World's Fastest Indian", "Thirteen Days") directs from a screenplay by the legendary BAFTA- and Emmy-winning writing team of Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais ("Flushed Away", "Still Crazy", "Porridge"). The producers are Charles Roven ("Batman Begins", "Three Kings", "City of Angels", "Twelve Monkeys") and Steven Chasman ("Unleashed", "The Transporter", "The One"). The executive producers are George McIndoe , Ryan Kavanaugh , David Alper , Alan Glazer , Gary Hamilton , Alex Gartner , and Christopher Mapp .

THE BANK JOB was filmed over 10 weeks on London locations, at Ealing Studios, the production's base, and at Pinewood, where the bank's exterior and the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road were built on the studio's backlot. Some additional scenes were filmed in Australia.

THE ROBBERY

The Sixties had seen flower power, student riots, the green revolution, the first moon landing, Beatlemania and Swinging London. The transition into the "Me Decade", as writer Tom Wolfe called it, heralded the dawn of the computer age, with the creation of the floppy disc and the introduction of the microprocessor. And disco was to come…

In 1971, Britain was still coming to terms with the passing of the Sixties. Shoppers were wrestling with the unfamiliar simplicity of decimal currency, a plague of strikes was looming for the Conservative Government under Edward Heath and additional troops were being sent to Northern Ireland as the situation there continued to deteriorate.

One day in September, news broke of an extraordinary mystery. An amateur radio "ham", Robert Rowland, alerted Scotland Yard that he had overheard a robbery in progress somewhere within a 10-mile radius of Central London. Rowland, who lived in Wimpole Street, had been tuned in to the 27.15 megacycles radio frequency at 11.00pm on Saturday, 11 th September, trying to contact a fellow "ham" in Australia. He picked up a conversation between what sounded like a team of bank raiders and their lookout on a nearby rooftop. He began to tape the radio exchanges, while trying to communicate his suspicions to the police. At 2.00am, a senior officer decided to take his report seriously and called in radio detector vans in an attempt to trace the transmissions. Unfortunately, by the time Post Office engineers could be brought in from weekend leave, the "walkie-talkie" conversations had ceased.

As the search intensified, police officers checked on 750 banks in the inner London area, paying special attention to the 150 banks within a mile of Wimpole Street. On Sunday afternoon, they visited Lloyd's Bank on the corner of Baker Street and Marylebone Road, but found no signs of entry - the 15-inch thick doors of the vault were intact and secured by a time-lock. They were unaware that the raiders were still inside. It was not until the bank opened for business after the weekend that the robbery was discovered. The contents of scores of safety deposit boxes in the vault had been looted in what was Britain's biggest ever robbery.

The gang had dug a 40-foot tunnel from the basement of Le Sac, a leather goods shop which they had leased, two doors away from the bank. The robbers tunnelled under the Chicken Inn restaurant and then, using a thermic lance, through the 3ft of reinforced concrete which formed the floor of the vault. The floor was not wired to the alarm system, as it was thought to be impenetrable. Eight tons of rubble were excavated and left behind in the shop when they escaped, with the contents of 268 deposit boxes.

The "walkie-talkie robbery", as it became known, was curiously similar in execution to the one solved by the legendary Baker Street resident Sherlock Holmes in Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Red Headed League". In this case, however, countless questions remain unanswered. Only four men were convicted in connection with the crime and much of the loot was never recovered. Of the stolen property which the police did manage to retrieve, most was never reclaimed.

"But I found a few of the real people, we spoke with them and we put that authenticity through our screenplay. One of the gentlemen involved – he's a nice guy, he's in his seventies now – he told me that they got on quite well with the police, because it wasn't a violent crime. They didn't use guns, they didn't beat anyone up and, in fact, back then there was a lot of controversy about police corruption.

"One thing that people never think of is, what do people put in safe deposit boxes? Sometimes it's personal keepsakes, but very often, people put things in the box that they don't want other people to know they have. So, when these boxes got robbed, no-one could come forward because where did they get all that money? Where did they get that jewellery? Why are there guns in their boxes?

"Some of the guys have visited our set, but we kept their names and who they were confidential, because they are living a different life now and they're parents and grandparents and on a different path. In fact there were a couple of hiccups along the way because one person was involved as a consultant and it brought up so many memories from his past, he didn't want to go there any more and he withdrew from the process. But then, through some persuading, he got back involved again – a very nice guy. I think their genuineness makes things that much more relevant.

"And there's also something timeless about the fact that in our world we're often manipulated by the media. We read a newspaper and think it's fact. And what we found out here was that, because of the 'D Notice' that was issued – allegedly - there was never anything reported about the robbery after the first four days – ever – except for some minor mentions of the arraignments later. That's quite ironic and often, in London, when I'm in a taxi or speaking to someone who was around at the time, they remember the 'walkie-talkie' robbery and what happened. They knew someone, who knew someone, who knew someone who was involved. I think there's something sort of magical about it and to try to tell the story in a contemporary way is what we've tried to do."

The significance of the bank's location was not lost on the robbers. Apparently, before leaving, they wrote on the inside wall of the safe 'let Sherlock Holmes try to solve this'…….

Filming "The Bank Job"

When Roger Donaldson was sent the script of THE BANK JOB by Charles Roven, who had produced his film "Cadillac Man", he was immediately drawn by the idea of making a film in England again, his first since "The Bounty" (1984). "I was attracted to the fact that it was a real story and there were lots of interesting facts about this bank robbery. My dad was born here, I have a British passport, my son lives in London, so I was keen to make a film here," says the Australian-born director. "One of the great things about shooting in England is that there is a fantastic depth of really good, talented actors and so casting is always a great pleasure. For me, the movie is about who's in it. And there's fantastic technical expertise, I think this is probably one of the best crews I've ever worked with in my life."

Producer Roven is delighted to be working with Roger again. "What's so great is that Roger is the perfect director to make this film - he has done so many different kinds of movies in his career. He's done the thriller, he's done the character piece, he's done the action movie and he has also done those true stories, those true, heart-warming stories like the one he did a couple of years ago - 'The World's Fastest Indian'. This is the kind of a movie that allows you to blend all these techniques. It is very suspenseful, it's got a tremendous amount of real-life comedy and the characters are really interesting and there's a part of us in all of them."

"I thought this would be an interesting movie, from lots of different perspectives", admits Donaldson. "I enjoy taking a look at what makes society tick and I was interested in the real facts, the history of the period, the time and the politics. I grew up with English TV and the English do have a particular sense of humour that I've always responded to and enjoyed. The writers, Dick and Ian, have made a name for themselves with it, while I brought to the story my own reputation as a director of political thrillers, I guess, with 'No Way Out' and 'Thirteen Days'. It's an amalgam of two sorts of, I wouldn't say styles, but two sorts of talent. What interested me about this script is that it's inspired by real people and real events and it's a period of English history that I think is unique and many of the characters in the story are unique in the part they played.

"I, personally, love the research – that's one of the things I really do embroil myself in. I finished up going to the newspapers of the time, to the national archives, digging up facts that have not seen the light of day since they happened in 1971."

"We were living in London at the time," says Dick Clement. "What we remembered were the headlines about the radios. It was only when we started to research it that we discovered that the story went off the front pages very quickly – it was there for a couple of days and then nothing. Obviously, we had no idea about any of the hidden agenda that's in the movie, because so many aspects of it have never come to light before. How much of it we have got right, I have no idea. We'll let other people decide that."

Ian La Frenais enjoyed the period feel of the story. "So many robbery or heist films that are done now are all so dependent on hi-tech, people breaking in using computers to hack into security systems, so this is an old-fashioned robbery - picks and shovels, digging under the ground, blasting through the bank and tearing those boxes apart with crowbars!"

According to Clement, "what's fascinating is that the geography hasn't changed at all. You can still go to Baker Street, right this minute, and you can see exactly where the shop is, where they tunnelled in from, with a little Chicken Inn in the middle – it's still a fast food restaurant, it may not be a Chicken Inn any more but you can actually see the geography that hasn't changed in 35 years."

"At one point we were thinking of shooting the film in Australia," says Steven Chasman, "because Melbourne looks similar to a European city. It's really quite expensive, shooting here, but we felt that we would want to have the authenticity. The actors are so important and there are such great technicians here, such great artists, and the film would benefit from it. And, obviously, the movie takes place in London and that's why we're here. The biggest challenge, I think, was trying to put as much as possible on the screen, but it's well worth it, because it's been a really fabulous experience."

Production designer Gavin Bocquet was happy to rise to the challenge: "Finding those locations in London that haven't been changed enough for us to shoot was quite hard. We had sixty or seventy sets or locations to find and, with little money, you've really got to be in tune with the director and with Mick Coulter, the cinematographer, to understand what you can shoot in certain locations and what you can't."

"When I counted up one of drafts of the script, I had something like 76 locations, which is twice as many as you would normally have," says location manager Giles Edelston. "The story reminded me about several locations I'd used in the past. None of them exists any more - London is one big building site. But we found quite a lot of new material on this, like the Pigalle Club in Piccadilly – it's always nice to film in a location that has never been on camera before."

Gavin Bocquet agrees. "It was a huge challenge to find those little areas of London that more or less can be shot as 1970s, without much work being done. But we did an awful lot of research into that period. We had some very good BBC news footage, especially of the bank robbery itself, showing how it was, two or three days later.

"Roger was trying to make the whole bank sequence seamless, because, as normal, we have to shoot things in different places, on locations and on some studio sets. We had lots of discussions about the best way of doing that and we've ended up with an exterior street set at Pinewood and three stage sets at Ealing which include the tunnel and the basement of Le Sac. Then another location, which was the bank vault, was built in the old Bethnal Green Town Hall. But we had some very good reference, either from the BBC or from police photographs of the actual bank robbery. The way Roger shot it, the audience will believe the bank vault and the tunnel and the crypt and the Le Sac basement were underneath the shops. And that's always the illusion that you're trying to create. Nobody will really appreciate how we put all that together, if it works, because everybody will think that it was done for real."

The production covered an extraordinary amount of ground during the ten-week shoot. The locations ranged from luxurious Bayswater apartments to East End workshops, from seedy pubs and clubs to august, wood-panelled offices and from the Royal Courts of Justice to Chatham's Historic Naval Dockyard. Scenes on the London Underground were filmed at the decommissioned Aldwych station and, for a memorable two days, the production took over Platform One at London's bustling Paddington Station, complete with a 1971 locomotive and carriages, the first time ever that a film company had brought a train into the station. "The fact that you can shoot in Paddington and on a platform is extraordinary," says actress Saffron Burrows, "You'd see shell-suits walking into shot and hideous orange pieces of luggage – our idea of how design has progressed is horrendous. So you would see the odd real person walking into shot and people were shooing them out of the way. It was kind of wonderful!"

THE CHARACTERS

"We had to invent them, based on the fact that there were so many guys involved, working in so many different businesses, "explains Ian La Frenais. "They weren't really experienced professional criminals, they were kind of peripheral figures of the London criminal world. In fact, they were pretty small-time players, and they got involved in what became the most successful bank robbery ever in British history – which is extraordinary."

According to Dick Clement: "We were confidently told that 'Terry' was involved in the slightly dodgy used car trade. And we were also told confidently that 'Kevin' (I mean, these are not their real names) was a photographer, a sort of would-be David Bailey, but not quite in that league. And clearly there was a woman involved, because all the police reports say they heard a female voice down there, so we have invented Martine, but we knew that she was there. So, in a way, we have connected the dots. We invented Dave completely, we invented Bambas and there was definitely somebody rather like the Major, because they needed someone with the right accent, to sign the lease on the store. So we took what we were given and ran with it."

"Vogel was based on a real character," adds La Frenais. "But again we had to invent him. He was definitely based on a real character, who ran a sort of porn empire - this was before DVDs and the porn movie industry. Those girly mag stores and strip clubs. And the lady who runs the brothel was based on a person who everyone knows of now.

"Michael X was perceived as a political figure and it wasn't true. There was kind of a connection with him and slum landlords, which had spilled over a few years earlier from the Christine Keeler crisis and the Profumo crisis and had an impact on our story. Everyone in the intelligence services was freaked out that there might be another scandal." Clement agrees: "I think it is also true to say that he played the race card in his own favour, very cleverly, by riding the tide of the liberal sentiments towards the black power movement. Whereas, in fact, I think that it's fair to say that he was a pretty bad guy."

As actor Peter de Jersey recalls, "These were pretty violent times for people. After all, Michael X was a con man and a gangster, as well as aspiring to be a leader of the black people, and he began to believe his own myth. While he was in Trinidad he was asked the question 'are you a Socialist?' and he said 'no, when you ask me about my politics you have to think more along the lines of Napoleon and Hitler'."

Michael X becomes a key figure in the story of THE BANK JOB, when he threatens to publish pictures of a Royal Princess in flagrante , which he has stored in his safety deposit box in Baker Street. According to producer Charles Roven, "MI5 and MI6 decided what they needed to do was to set up a bank job – to go into his safety deposit vault and steal these photos and the negatives – so they could go ahead and prosecute this guy. They were going after those photos. That was the reason for the whole set up."

The leading role of Terry Leather is played by Jason Statham and director Roger Donaldson is a fan: "I think Jason's just a very charismatic actor, he's proved himself in all sorts of movies. It's hard to find what makes a star – I think he has a very charismatic quality. I really do equate him to a British Steve McQueen in a way – a really great, brooding sort of quality about him. He does a lot with a little. He has a very good voice. All those things go to make him the unique actor that he is – he's not like anyone else that I know of on the screen."

Producer Roven concurs: "He wanted to play the role of Terry because it allows him to do it all. To be a tough guy when he needs to be. To be a clever guy in terms of figuring out how to do this robbery. To be a local boy. To be romantic, in terms of the triangle between him and Martine and his wife and his family. To have those conflicts and those emotional situations to deal with. It really shows the great range as an actor that he has. Jason is a guy who can just do it all. The other thing about him is that he's incredibly likeable. He has such a great persona on screen that you gravitate to him because he's such a likeable guy.

"There is absolutely no question that, if we didn't have Jason's commitment to do the picture, to play the role of Terry, the movie wouldn't have gotten made. We needed his support in every way and he was thrilled to support it, because it's not often that any actor gets to do a screenplay that's as much fun and as well-written as the one that Ian and Dick delivered, nor work with a guy like Roger Donaldson, who's such an accomplished director, who's worked with the greatest actors in the world and made magnificent movies. So it was a thrill for all of us to be working together and Jason was at the forefront of it."

Jason is enjoying the opportunity to step aside from the high-powered action roles, for which he's famous: "This, thankfully, hasn't been one that's tested me too much in the stunt department. I've replaced holding a gun with holding a pint of ale. It's not particularly action-packed – hanging out of helicopters and doing a lot of the silliness I've been paid to do in the past. It's been more of a sophisticated thriller, with a bit of action slung in as well. People do see me roll up my sleeves, but for the right reasons. It's all justified, the motivation of the action that comes at the end of the film is so there , because one of our good friends gets killed and we're in a right sticky spot. I'm sure it's going to be a great crowd pleaser."

"Martine is Saffron Burrows, who's beautiful and a great actress as well," declares Roger Donaldson. "She plays a character in the film that's probably a little bit like the career that she's stayed with. She was once a fabulous model as well as an actress. In fact, she's perfect for the role." "Martine Love is someone who, I suppose like myself in many ways, has left 'the life' and entered a new life," says Saffron. "She and Terry have this history together, which I like in the way that it's quite undefined and the writers haven't chosen to nail down entirely what their history is."

Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais were delighted with Saffron's casting. "We met her in Los Angeles and had tea with her at the Four Seasons," says La Frenais. "We realised that she was so right on for this, the voice, the attitude, the looks – she could look like a '60s girl." "We worked with her on a series called "Full Stretch" some years ago and I think it was her first speaking part," remembers Clement. "She had this wonderful combination of great looks and an authentic London accent and that's exactly what we've written."

Rising stage and screen star Stephen Campbell Moore is Kevin, Terry's best friend and aspiring photographer. "He is part of Terry's gang and basically, when Terry asks him to come along on this job, he does what Terry says. He fancies himself as a bit like David Bailey. The truth is that Kevin photographs a bit of fashion, but mostly he does passport photos and things like that. He is probably not as good as he thinks he is.

"Kevin has always been in love with Martine. He took some photographs of her years ago, and the photos are still plastered on his wall. He thinks that he and Martine have a 'thing' still, but the truth is that it was one drunken night many years ago and she's moved on."

"I play Dave Shilling, who's basically one of Terry Leather's best friends," says Daniel Mays. "He's a member of the crew, a member of the gang that performs the bank robbery. He's a likeable guy, a sort of part-time porno star. We had to shoot our own 'porno' the first day, which was a major highlight for me and it's been downhill ever since! No, it was great, he's also a stand-in for movie stars on film sets, and he's quite fashionable, he thinks he's a boy about town, got the gift of the gab. He's just a really fun character to play.

"When Terry turns to him and says 'look, we've got this one last score, it's a bank robbery', I think the stakes are really raised and he's a bit scared and a bit dubious about the whole thing. But, you know, he gives the impression that he can handle it and he goes along for the ride. He doesn't come out too well at the end of it."

The obvious villain of the piece is Lew Vogel, played by David Suchet, a distinguished character actor and an international television favourite as Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, a role he has played more than 60 times since 1989. "Vogel is a very unsavoury type, a typical East End London boy, who grew up into the vice racket and decided to make money off the immigrants coming into London at that time - while also running the pornography industry in Soho. Not a very nice man at all. He can be charming, but absolutely ruthless. It's not so long after the London mafia was around, in the '30s and '40s. He's an extension of that really, a very dangerous man indeed.