Twists Keep Heist Caper Moving
By Nick Chordas, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Jul. 15–’The Bank Job’
R, $29.95
The thoroughly engaging piece of pulp entertainment — a hard-boiled heist flick set in 1970s London — should find the audience it deserves on video.
Jason Statham wisely breaks from the ridiculous Transporter series to play Terry Leather, a Baker Street villain who recruits a gang of fellow blue-collar crooks to pull off a daring bank robbery.
Based on the 1971 Lloyds Bank robbery, The Bank Job is full of neat twists and turns, although more than one coincidence stretches the limits of believability. Fortunately, director Roger Donaldson (Thirteen Days) keeps the narrative moving so that the viewer has little time or desire to analyze the story.
Extras include a commentary track, two featurettes and deleted scenes.
— Nick Chordas nchordas@dispatch.com
’21′
PG-13, $28.96 to $34.95
“Inspired by a true story,” director Robert Luketic’s movie is about a math professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Kevin Spacey) who recruits a group of brilliant students (including Jim Sturgess and Kate Bosworth) to master blackjack and win a bundle in Las Vegas casinos.
Both single- and two-disc editions include a commentary by Luketic and producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca and three documentaries.
— Bruce Dancis McClatchy News Service
‘Vampyr’
Not rated, $39.99
Considered one of the most artfully made vampire movies, the 1932 film by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Day of Wrath) is a nightmarish tale about a young student of the occult who experiences horrific dreams and supernatural hauntings after he visits a strange castle.
The film has a restored high-definition digital transfer, an audio commentary by film scholar Tony Rayns, a documentary on Dreyer and a booklet of essays about the film.
— B.D.
‘Dallas: The Complete Ninth Season’
Not rated, $39.98
The ninth season of the Texas soap opera will be forever remembered as the one Pam dreamed.
The cliffhanging 31st episode ends with the remarried Pam (Victoria Principal) awakening from what we presume is her honeymoon and finding her former husband, Bobby Ewing (Patrick Duffy), taking a shower, even though Bobby was supposed to be dead and buried.
As fans recall, at the beginning of season 10, we learned that the previous season was just a dream.
— Gary Budzak gbudzak@dispatch.com
R, $29.95
PG-13, $28.96 to $34.95
Not rated, $39.99
Not rated, $39.98
—–
To see more of The Columbus Dispatch, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.columbusdispatch.com.
Copyright (c) 2008, The Columbus Dispatch, Ohio
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
NYSE:LYG,