Despite its generic title, director Roger Donaldson’s The Bank Job is a clever caper about a quintet of Brit thieves who failed to ask the question “why?” when a seemingly perfect bank cleanout (later called “the walkie-talkie robbery”) landed on their doorstep. And better yet, it’s based on a true story.

While crooked London car dealer Terry Leather (tough guy Jason Statham in yet another actioner) isn’t rolling back the odometer on used cars, he’s planning elaborate heists in obscure, unsuspecting towns. (Yes, we said rolling back the odometer – it’s 1971, after all.)

So, when Leather’s friend and femme fatale ex-model Martine Love (Saffron Burrows) cruises up to his garage in a Cooper Mini Minor (again, it’s 1971 folks), he swoons at whispers of “the big score, the one that makes sense of everything” at Lloyd’s Bank on Baker Street.

Of course, those whispers shroud Martine’s true motives – her boyfriend, a Black Power thug called Michael X, is evading the law, and to snag him, MI5 secret agents arrest Martine. In exchange for Martine’s freedom and Michael X’s delivery, the MI5 offer to drop charges in exchange for a bank heist.

Although the characters Leather recruits and dispatches to execute the vault wipeout are one-dimensional (the ethnic “tunnel-digging king” genius, a “posh” conman known as “The Major,” and a couple dumbbell, cockney sidekicks), Statham is certainly not. Bullet-headed and unabashedly British, he’s an artful ringleader here, and like his last thousand or so action films, he gets to throw an elbow or two for good measure.

Donaldson injects just the right amount of tension into The Bank Job – a very unconventional but suspenseful thriller.