Although I didn't particularly like The Bank Job, the film provides a window into an interesting time in London's history, when a sexually adventurous Royal caused more than a little trouble for the government and a group of thieves who stumbled into the conspiracy. Let's start at the beginning...

In 1971, a small gang of thieves broke into the safety deposit vault of a branch of Lloyd's Bank. The group had rented a shop down the street and tunnelled from the basement of the shop about 40 feet beneath a restaurant to get into the bank from below. A local ham radio operator overheard some of the chatter between the thieves and a lookout and brought the police in to see what they thought. After four days of coverage in the media, the situation suddenly went quiet when the government issued a D-Notice (effectively calling it a matter of national security).

Only recently were the reasons behind the D-Notice disclosed. Evidently Princess Margaret was an adventurous soul who traveled quite a bit in the Caribbean in the 1960s and '70s. Photos of a sexual nature taken of Princess Margaret on one or more of her trips were stored in a safety deposit box in the bank that was robbed that night in 1971. The photos supposedly were associated with Michael X, a Black Power leader in London at the time. Michael X was purportedly a man associated with prostitution and the drug trade in London as well. However, the files in London about Michael X won't be released until 2054, so who knows when that story will fully come to light.

(If you want to know more about the history involved, read this article in the Mirror. It's very interesting with lots of curious twists and turns.)

So now that you know a bit of the history that the movie is based on, you also know much of the plot of The Bank Job, which stars Jason Statham. Directed by Roger Donaldson and written by Dick Clement and Ian La Frenais, the movie focuses on Statham's character, Terry Leather. Terry runs a car lot and used to run with a group of small-time thugs. He's approached by an old friend of his, Martine Love (played by Saffron Burrows), and told of a bank job. She thinks he should get the band back together and take advantage of the situation.