The film's set in 1970 London, so naturally there's no Oceans-y duplicating-the-security-officer's-retina-with-your-iPhone-to-break-into-the-vault (last one, I swear!) for these thieves. They communicate via old school walkie-talkies, they break into their bank's safe deposit boxes using a jackhammer and a damn crowbar, and they have the unfortunate task of hauling gym bags full of cash, porny photos of pious royals, and the local pimp's police bribe records through seedy London. Everyone wants their dirty secrets back, there's corruption everywhere, MI-5 might secretly be behind the heist, and you can't trust anyone, even in your own villainous gang. Glorious.

The movie's a lot of fun, and I must say the costumes and sets are impeccably '70s, without being kitschy. I could have used a little more Statham being Statham, beating down a few more chumps, but he gets his signature fisticuffs in where it really counts, so I can't really complain. Also I have a girl crush on Saffron Burrows. She is fabulous. Now, on to the special features!

Audio commentary: Director Roger Donaldson, actress Saffron Burrows and the composer, whose name was not James Horner, so I didn't remember it, and sadly, no Jason Statham. Well, he's a very busy man! The commentary sticks to explaining location choices, troubleshooting when the vintage cars broke down and just generally how things were done. There isn't a whole lot of philosophical discussion of the film's themes, which is odd, because the movie brings up a whole mess of the racial, sexual, beaurocratic and classist problems of the time, but I guess they didn't want to seem uppity or something. My favorite tidbit came from Ms. Burrows, who revealed that a pair of her fabulous 70s platforms were borrowed from her mother, who wore them when she was pregnant with her. That's right. The woman wore four-inch platforms while pregnant. Now I see where Saffron gets her fierceness!

Deleted/Extended Scenes: This segment is all of six minutes, total. The "scenes" are very short and not terribly interesting and I see why they were cut.

Inside the Bank Job: This is the making-of featurette. It's pretty run-of-the-mill, with the director and producers explaining how the cast all came together and why they wanted to do the story, etc. Statham doesn't talk on it though. Well, he's a very busy man! Someone does call him "the British Steve McQueen" though, which made me laugh pretty hard.

The Baker Street Bank Raid: This little documentary of sorts about the actual crime is the gem of the special features. The movie is based on a true story, and there were elements of the heist in it that were so far-fetched I assumed they were Hollywood embellishments - watching this doc, I was shocked to discover many of them were not. There are close ups of the actual crime scene photos and police reports, as well as clips from the local news coverage and new interviews with some of the people involved in the investigation. Ooh, and a juicy interview with an MI-5 ex-pat who explains just how possible it was for the organization to orchestrate a crime like this one (turns out it's very possible, not to mention likely).

Buy Now.