ry into a rousing virtue. That's because this heist flick -- based on the real 1971 Lloyds Bank raid in London -- amounts to a holy war between the haves and the have-nots. That hoity-toity British lord, the one who likes to get handcuffed and dress in women's undies? Bad. Those MI5 agents shaking down the sex club proprietor? Evil. But those cockneys tunneling underground toward a vault full of other people's money, intent on stealing everything? They're heroes.
Why? Because they're hard-luck blokes, the plucky kind who used to go to war for the British Empire but nowadays are the first to get sacrificed in Machiavellian games designed to save the upper class from the embarrassment of scandal. And in this world of conniving cops, unprincipled spooks and other shady operators, the only victory is for the little man to walk away with the loot.
That's the premise of Roger Donaldson's highly entertaining movie, based on the few known facts of the original case. When the real robbers made off with a haul worth more than 4 million pounds from a Lloyds bank, the aftermath was anything but normal. No official arrests were made. No money was returned. And the government issued a gag order -- known as a D Notice -- on details of the crime. Days later, the whole matter had disappeared from the pages of Fleet Street. To outside observers, the conclusion was obvious: London had cleaned up after its own.
